The Nature of Things

I had not read any of the books in Marilynn Robinson's acclaimed Gilead series prior to this one. In fact, I had never read anything by her. So I have no way of knowing if this is typical of her writing, but this novel just jumps right in, without any explanation or introduction, to a scene of a man and a woman walking on a street and having a philosophical/theological discussion. We don't know who these people are, where they are, or what time period they are living in. Moreover, once this first section finishes up, the narrative moves on to another scene of these same two unknown characters in a cemetery at night. It develops that the man, who is apparently a vagrant, had gone there to sleep, whereas the woman, for whatever reason, was visiting the cemetery when the guard locked the gate for the night and she was unable to get out. They meet up and they spend the night together wandering the cemetery and once again having their esoteric philosophical/theological discussion. E...