I finished Marilynne Robinson's latest novel, Lila, last week. Robinson doesn't write a lot of fiction, but when she does it us with remarkable craft and skill. I tend to gobble books, but hers should be savoured. There are paragraphs in her novels that I stop to ponder and to mark for revisits.
Robinson's novel Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, while Home received the UK's Orange Prize. Gilead, set in the 1950's, introduces us to a congregational minister, Rev. John Ames, who serves in a shabby old town called Gilead. Home is a companion to Gilead and focuses on Rev. Boughton, John's longtime friend and colleague, told from the perspective of Boughton's adult daughter, Glory. Boughton's son is a prodigal whose homecoming is hardly a happy ending.
Lila is old Rev. Ames second and much younger wife. After losing his first wife and child to illness decades before, John finds his way into a relationship and a kind of happiness with the almost feral Lila. She has wandered the American Midwest with a group of other vagabonds since early childhood. Landing in Gilead is a minor miracle, an expression of grace, for a person who is both world-weary and child-like. She is the human version of the wary cat who shows up in the neighbourhood and is patiently welcomed into a household. For Lila it is coming to Sunday service once, and then again.
Lila's tentative curiosity about the bible, and baptism and prayer is wonderful to behold, but not in a spectacular, "see the light" way. Lila and God play an almost desperate game of hide-and-seek and the reader is never sure of the outcome. Yet the novel is so satisfying, at least from my perspective.
Robinson is a remarkable theologian and explores important themes of faith throughout her books. In a tweet I described Lila as a gospel rather than a parable because it is a rich journey into what it means to be Christian.
Have you read any of these novels? I would love to have a discussion series involving all three.
4 comments:
Have not read them yet, but will look them up, after I finish the Louise Penny series (which I am loving...)!
I read your blog and "The Writer's Almanac " most mornings. This morning Marilynne Robinson was featured in both. Guess you knew it was her birthday! Here's what the almanac says about her:
It's the birthday of writer Marilynne Robinson (books by this author), born in Sandpoint, Idaho (1943). Although she is often known as the novelist who took a 23-year break between her award-winning, critically acclaimed novels, Housekeeping and Gilead — and then only four more before her third, Home, a companion to Gilead — she has published as many books of nonfiction as novels. Her essays are polemical, in sharp contrast to her fiction, upbraiding the British government for environmental degradation in her first nonfiction book, lamenting the "empty" state of contemporary discourse in her second, and, in 2010, waxing philosophical on the science versus religion debate in Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self.
She said: "I grew up with the confidence that the greatest privilege was to be alone and have all the time you wanted. That was the cream of existence. I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone. It's a good predisposition in a writer. And books are good company. Nothing is more human than a book."
Okay, I would like to claim that I cleverly timed my blog with Robinson's birthday but I was oblivious. Thanks for pointing this out Shirley. And I think you need to get on to these novels Judy. Three Pines gets creepy after a point -- so much murder and mayhem in a sleepy little town!
Yes, that part (so much in one town) is a bit unbelievable - but the development of the characters is fascinating - and you begin to see real warmth and caring amongst them, even with the barbs and name - calling a few of them indulge in regularly. Having been in that area, I like trying to identify the real places, as well, fro the descriptions.
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