Autobiographical writings are supposed to be spectacular these days, a thrill a page…. But I know that kind of thing won't do for the autobiography of Robert Francis…. [Rather, The Trouble with Francis invites comparison with] Walden, Edwin Muir's An Autobiography, Nadezha Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope. Like them it uses one life, one set of experiences, as a way of investigating how an individual existence can gain coherence, shape, and meaning under social circumstances that are hostile or indifferent; and like them it succeeds through a scrupulous honesty that is especially wary of tidal waving. The books I have mentioned could be called low-key, but they all turn out to be engrossing and memorable…. (pp. 28-9)

Words like "recluse" and "hermit" do not really fit [Robert Francis], but there can be no doubt that by most standards his life has been marked by solitude, and that his literary...