Lila (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

Having loved both Gilead and Home, I expected to also be smitten by Lila, the third of this series placed in mid-20th century Iowa and focused on two pastors' families. Lila, whom readers have met in the other books, now surfaces with her full and sad life story before her life as the second Mrs. John Ames, the reverend who is the protagonist of Gilead.

Here we discover Lila's roots as a vagabond, who as a child was literally snatched from a "family" whose behavior to her was almost incomprehensibly inhumane. Doll, another vagabond but with a heart, takes Lila and raises her amid a makeshift family that drifts in search of day labor work.

However, I couldn't appreciate this book nearly as much as I did the others in the series. I couldn't relate -- at all -- to Lila as a character, could not see her growth as a character until well into the book's narrative. Growing up dirt poor, with no education and only the love of her caretaker, Doll, Lila is a rough character, mistrustful of the world for obvious reasons, whose heart we cannot read. I was, frankly, also bored by so much of the narrative that revisited her years with her makeshift family, and found it annoying that it was never made clear how she met up with them, or why they disappeared from her life. There are many anecdotes about her life with them, but no ongoing drama that builds to anything.

After losing Doll, Lila travels to the town of Gilead and enters Reverend Ames' church, where the Reverand suddenly has one of those epiphanies like in the movies that this woman is somehow meant for him, feeling a connection to someone who is basically a vagrant. Lila begins to ask him questions about life, and the unlikeliest of romances develops. Despite having just about nothing in common, they marry.

Marilyn Robinson's narrative weaves consistently from Lila's first-person recollections to third-person, creating some confusion. She also refers to Reverend Ames as "elderly" throughout the book, but we know from Gilead that he was only around 60 at the time he married Lila, based on the age he discloses in that book as he writes a letter to his 7-year-old son, a sort of ethical will, because he is sure he won't live to see his son grow to adulthood.

John Ames is an educated, articulate man, and it is never believable to me that he can feel such a connection to a woman who has no education, no trust ("You don't know nothing about me," she tells him repeatedly), and a sordid past. When he reads some of his sermons to her at the kitchen table, it is almost absurd that he could expect her to understand the vocabulary, let alone concepts, he is using.

The book's larger themes revolve around faith and redemption, as well as the longing for a strong parent-child connection. Ames lost his first wife and child decades earlier; Lila was treated no better than a stray cat by her family of origin and has longed for a child of her own.

One has to totally suspend belief that two such opposite universes, could form such a bond.

There's just something peaceful about a trip to Gilead. It is a time and place beyond my experience. Lila is told thru the voice of Lila, a homeless, nameless, ageless woman who happens upon Gilead and falls into a strange live with Rev Ames. Lila's past is slowly revealed among her musings and we learn about second chances and mutual respect.

I read and loved Gilead, and this is book is also wonderful in the ways Gilead was wonderful. This book was also very romantic and full of love. It's hard to review the novels you love more than ordinary novels. I don't feel up to the task of reviewing what is clearly the work of a genius. There's not much to be said about it other than it approaches perfection. It allows us to inhabit a person a time that is not our own. It also allows us to try to grasp what Marilyn Robinson understands and believes about religion which is ... a lot. Beautiful novel. Please read it.