Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. Where would we be without books? Where would we be without good? No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

A book I've been waiting for with enormous anticipation has finally appeared.

It's Marilyn Robinson's Jack.

It's the fourth book in her Gilead series,

which begins with Gilead and then Home and then Lila,

and now we have Jack.

I would say that any of these books can be read separately,

but I have to express the fact, maybe I'm just in a trance, but Jack, the newest, is my favorite.

I've read it three times so far, and I'm still enamored. I'm lost in it.

I just think it's a wonderful book.

Jack is mentioned in earlier books.

Did you know him well when you started to write this book?

Well, you know, I had a very strong sense of him.

It's hard to describe, but I think, I mean, to say I knew him might overstate,

but I sort of understood what it would be like to be in a room with him, you know, maybe even to attempt a conversation with him. Well, the book is written almost entirely in dialogue. This is not to say that there aren't descriptions,

but there are descriptions that are parts of the dialogue, and it seemed to me that the dialogue,

the ongoing dialogue between Jack and Della is an exploration of how people can truly come to know one another.

Did you know them better still as you wrote them?

This seems to me to be a very intimate book.

You know, conjuring a character is one of the most mysterious things in the world.

I couldn't really say whether I felt as if I was creating Jack or he was unfolding himself to me in some sense, you know?

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