The Book of Benjamin
Palimpsest Press - October 16th, 2023
Like an obsessive baby name book with only one entry, The Book of Benjamin establishes links between identity, birth, and grief. Braiding the story of his stillborn sister with the Biblical account of Benjamin to explore how names and their etymologies might shape our self-understanding, Ben Robinson resists the traditional individual focus of the memoir, while also investigating new forms of masculinity. The Book of Benjamin is the testament of both a son and a father, contrasting genealogy with larger communal narratives.
“Just how many Benjamin Robinsons are there? Actually, how many of any of us are there and how does our own name name us? With thoughtful, tender, wry intelligence, open to the strange attractors of names and naming, of language and self, of culture, family and story, The Book of Benjamin is as simple and complex as a name, as revealing, telling and enticing. I could call Ben Robinson every name in the book and, you name it, it’d all be high praise.”
— Gary Barwin, author of The Most Charming Creatures
Interviews & Reviews
Excerpt and reading in Send My Love to Anyone
Review at Plain Pleasures
Review at Hamilton Review of Books
Review at Periodicity Journal
Review at Hamilton Arts & Letters
Interview at The Miramichi Reader [& Part 2]
Interview at The Temz Review
Interview on Get Lit
Interview on All Write in Sin City
“I love The Book of Benjamin‘s quiet upheaval of our beliefs around names as linguistic markers of selves and others. In distilled language, Robinson has threaded his profound questions through tender, funny, and devastating family memories that gather until the fabric is turbulent with meanings.”
— Sadiqa de Meijer, author of alfabet/alphabet