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Lila A Novel Marilynne Robinson 9780374187613 Books

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Lila A Novel Marilynne Robinson 9780374187613 Books

Gilead and Home are two of my favorite novels, so I could not have been more excited when Lila arrived at my doorstep. The character of Lila (Reverend Ames' wife) remained somewhat of a mystery in both the earlier novels. She was the much younger, loving wife of the wonderful Reverend Ames, but she was a woman with a private past that even her much older husband knew little about. This book fills in the character of Lila and begins with her as a 5 year-old girl crying outside a house with no one there to help her. She gets saved by Doll, and they develop a sweet maternal relationship that shapes the rest of her life.

Ultimately, Robinson might be my favorite writer. I do not have a religious bone in my body, but I find myself returning to Gilead again and again just to read Reverend Ames' thoughts on the world. And Robinson is also such an understanding, empathetic writer. In Home, Jack Boughton's struggles with religion and predestination shape the novel, but she refuses to condemn him for his atheism. Lila is a third piece to that puzzle about a woman uneasy with religion but read to engage with the questions it raises.

So yeah...these three novels have deeply affected me. The prose in Lila is as beautiful as her three earlier novels, and at points, possibly even more beautiful. Lila's torment gives Robinson the chance to do things with languages few people in the history of writing have been able to do. I recommend it highly.


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Lila A Novel Marilynne Robinson 9780374187613 Books Reviews

There are no chapters in this book. Is this a literary conceit, as in a writer playfully breaking rules, or is she making a point that what she has to say is so important that chapters might interfere with concentration? Since Robinson will never be accused of playfulness, and I don't sense she's dictatorial, I offer a third possibility the lack of chapters (although there are section breaks) may be metaphoric. Because once you get into the story, you will become a wanderer, compelled to the journey, hungering for some bit of plot but only receiving as much as is necessary to give you enough energy to continue. You will be fed by stunningly compassionate depictions of the apparent worst in human behavior, and by contemplations of the divine, such that this will allow you to continue on through the sparse landscape that is Lila.

One of the high points for me, a reader who counts Gilead as one of her top five books of all time, was the return of the good Reverend Ames. This thoughtful, open-minded, generous man sees Lila as a gift, not only for her companionship but as a window into another dimension of human life and spirituality. Because while Lila is only a few degrees removed from feral, she is bright and curious, and her perspective is riveting if bleak. Indeed, her intellect causes her intense pain, hungering as she does for understanding about life on earth and her place in it - as don't we all. In this, as with Ames' tortured acceptance of his own mortality and that of his friend Boughton, the book touches universal chords.

This story primarily consists of internal monologue, and much of it is oblique, so if you are not drawn to that kind of writing, this may not be for you. I love introspection, but still, I veered between feeling gratified and frustrated as I read this beautiful book. Ultimately, I know I will have to read it again, probably more than once, in order to do it justice. I'm not sure I'm smart enough for this deep a book, but like Lila, I'm smart enough to sense there's more to it than I can see from where I'm standing.
It takes no more than a sentence or two of Marilynne Robinson's most recent novel for the hard truth to set in that Lila - the eponymous heroine - will lead a life that is anything but ordinary. Born into a family in which the only viable alternative to abuse is neglect, the probability of Lila surviving childhood seems remote at best. And then, at the end of another day of horrifying routine after "the people inside fought themselves quiet", the child is snatched away by a woman known to her only as Doll. It is the middle of the night as Doll steals away from the porch asking no one who can answer "Where we gonna go?"

Set in the 1930s against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, "Lila" - novel and protagonist - is filled with the characters who display the resolve, desperation, and spirit that have come to mark that period in popular consciousness. But Marilynne Robinson is too intelligent, too aware, and too gifted to resort to a plot driven by hard luck cliché. Instead, she gives us Lila, the child becoming the woman, and her encounter with the world, viewing it through the prism of the migrant poor - those who, like her, were perhaps also unaware "that there were other names for seasons than planting and haying. Walk south ahead of the weather, walk north in time for the crops."

Destitute, hungry, and reconciled to the brutality and brevity of her existence, the girl trusts no one beyond Doll, expects nothing beyond crushing need. And it is here, when that need grows most desperate, that Marilynne Robinson's sublime literary creation - the homely township of Gilead - reappears to see us through the story of Lila.

Here, in Gilead, the young woman whose "whole life is written on her face" is met by the Reverend Ames, and it is with this introduction that Robinson's earlier, masterful novels "Gilead" and "Home" take on even greater depth. If you have not read those earlier works, "Lila" is nonetheless authentic, spirited storytelling which stands on its own. Taken as a trilogy, however, the lives of the residents of Gilead rightly claim their place in American literary history alongside those of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, Kennedy's Albany, and Bellow's Chicago.

As much as Lila is a story of neglect, injustice, and impoverishment, it is also one of hope and fulfillment. Lila in Gilead is a much needed confirmation that the best things in the world are as impossible to commodify as they are to rush. Anything worth having, anything that would last comes only with time, only after struggle. While this novel is certainly the most ardently "biblical" of Robinson's Gilead stories (perhaps it's a distinction without a difference, but "Gilead"'s frame was more `theological' than `biblical'), I don't see it as any real obstacle to fair-minded readers. This is just good storytelling which draws its kerygma from some brilliant, ancient poetry. (If we didn't know it was from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, we'd most likely think it was just some strange, obscure, and exhilarating old verse - the kind of thing Marilynne Robinson specializes in.)

Certainly the best description of what the book is about comes from the story itself. It is early on and Lila is considering the course that her life has taken, and she recalls a story the Reverend Ames told of how "...once when there was a storm a bird had flown into the house. He'd never seen one like it. The wind must have carried it in from some far-off place. He opened all the doors and windows, but it was so desperate to escape that for a while it couldn't find a way out. `It left a blessing in the house,' he said. `The wildness of it. Bringing the wind inside.'"

In classical Hebrew the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word - ruakh. With "Lila" Marilynne Robinson has performed a literary trinitarian miracle of sorts; she's given us three books and in them shown us a father (Gilead), and then a son (Home), and finally Lila, a wild - and would be holy - spirit.

Mirabile visu.
Gilead and Home are two of my favorite novels, so I could not have been more excited when Lila arrived at my doorstep. The character of Lila (Reverend Ames' wife) remained somewhat of a mystery in both the earlier novels. She was the much younger, loving wife of the wonderful Reverend Ames, but she was a woman with a private past that even her much older husband knew little about. This book fills in the character of Lila and begins with her as a 5 year-old girl crying outside a house with no one there to help her. She gets saved by Doll, and they develop a sweet maternal relationship that shapes the rest of her life.

Ultimately, Robinson might be my favorite writer. I do not have a religious bone in my body, but I find myself returning to Gilead again and again just to read Reverend Ames' thoughts on the world. And Robinson is also such an understanding, empathetic writer. In Home, Jack Boughton's struggles with religion and predestination shape the novel, but she refuses to condemn him for his atheism. Lila is a third piece to that puzzle about a woman uneasy with religion but read to engage with the questions it raises.

So yeah...these three novels have deeply affected me. The prose in Lila is as beautiful as her three earlier novels, and at points, possibly even more beautiful. Lila's torment gives Robinson the chance to do things with languages few people in the history of writing have been able to do. I recommend it highly.