Robinson returns to Gilead in the fine 'Lila'
In her latest novel, Marilynne Robinson returns to the mythical town of Gilead, Iowa. Lila — a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction — isn't exactly a prequel to 2004's Pulitzer-winning Gilead, or to 2008's Home, but it builds on both books in interesting ways.
Gilead is told in the voice of Rev. John Ames, near the end of his life, in the form of a 1956 letter-diary for his young son, Robby. Home covers the same time period, but from the perspective of Glory Boughton, the daughter of Ames' close friend, Rev. Robert Boughton. In Lila, the title character (who appeared in those earlier novels as a peripheral character) reveals her sad and troubled history.
Lila stands alone just fine in Robinson's trilogy, for those who have not read the previous books. If anything, it calls to mind the author's first novel, Housekeeping. Robinson's 1980 masterpiece, with its biblical cadences, explored the lives of two orphaned sisters, Ruthie and Lucille, and Sylvie, their eccentric aunt.
Like Ruthie and Lucille, Lila has endured an itinerant, difficult childhood. Although she is newly married to the widowed, elderly John Ames — and pregnant with his child — she feels restless. She landed in Gilead on a whim, seeking shelter initially in an abandoned shack: "She knew how to get by so long as nobody bothered her," Robinson writes. She didn't expect to befriend any of the locals, much less marry a preacher.
As a young girl, Lila was rescued from an abusive home by a migrant drifter named Doll. Despite her fierce devotion to Lila, Doll was an imperfect guardian. (For one thing, she may have killed Lila's father in a knife fight.) Lila's years with Doll were fraught with peril, instability and deprivation.
Lila finds the comfort of her new home in Gilead almost unbearable. Ames' patient love is a tough adjustment, too. "I got so much life behind me," she says. "It was nothing like this life." She misses it. Lila is an almost feral creature who finds domesticity stifling — a threat to her independence.
"I done some things in my life," she says, hoping to push Ames away, but nothing makes him judge her — even when she admits having once worked in a brothel in St. Louis.
Above all, she is unsettled by Ames' steady religious beliefs; she finds being in church strange and alienating. Yet she does feel a strong sense of kinship with him: "He looked as if he'd had his share of loneliness," Lila realizes, "and that was all right." Despite his relatively sedate life, Ames has also known suffering; he is still grieving over the deaths of his first wife and child.
The coupling between the devout Ames and the damaged Lila seems unlikely even to them. But as they learn, they have more in common, spiritually and emotionally, than they think. Robinson never falters as she shows the deepening of their bond, which is not without moments of comic awkwardness.
Lila is an exquisite meditation on loneliness, family and faith of all kinds. It is Robinson's finest novel since Housekeeping, and — considering the achievements of Gilead and Home — that's saying quite a lot.
Lila
By Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 261 pp.
4 stars out of four