Author Marilynne Robinson concludes her Gilead trilogy with
the story of Lila, the plain-spoken onetime drifter and whorehouse worker who
marries Reverend John Ames, a chief character in the two prior novels Gilead and Home. Echoes include the characters and themes of the two previous
entries, of course, but the author also maintains the same reverent, natural
tone that respects and understands all life, whether lived in a state of grace or
outside of it.
And grace has everything to do with Lila the novel and Lila the character. The book is among other
things a beginner’s catechism. Lila doesn’t know that much of what’s in the
Bible, but she has read some things that make perfect sense to her, about rage
and voices from on high, but also some other things that need quite a bit of
explaining.
She travels with an itinerant group, a loose assemblage that
seeks temporary work. She grows up in this hand-to-mouth fashion, having been
saved from neglectful parents by a woman named Doll. Lila has drifted outside
of society, working as she could, eventually finding herself employed in a
whorehouse. However, her potential for grace is always there: she has an
inquiring mind, is never as mean as the girls and women around her, has never
stolen, nor harmed another. She finds herself in Gilead on a rainy afternoon,
letting her clothes drip dry inside a church. She eventually engages Reverend
Ames in conversation, and then as a spiritual consultant on certain
philosophical questions. She asks him why things work out the way they do, and
it’s a question that occupies them both, along with the author and the reader,
for the remainder of the book.
Lila plunges into
the consciousness of its heroine in a way that bounces around considerably in
time, but this journey shows the author’s remarkable skill in using Lila’s
consciousness as a way of exploring deep and difficult issues. This is a main
purpose here: we accompany Lila in her beginner’s quest to understand her
universe. Along the way we have the kindly, beautiful John, her mentor and
student and lover, and his highly examined and literate relationship with God.
It’s as unique a romance as you will encounter in literature, this marriage of
John and Lila. It’s beautiful in itself, carefully paced, and expressed with
all the grace and respect Ms. Robinson can summon, which is – all of it, I
think. That also is one part of the point: I believe the author definitely
wants to leave her readers with the very distinct impression that you can
approach life’s vagaries, and the eternal questions, in a spiritual way, and
you will be made to feel welcome.
The book in effect introduces the Gilead trilogy, although it is published last. Its events
anticipate those of the other two books, and Lila’s new child and her husband
and her beliefs lead us up to the beginning of the first book in the trilogy, Gilead. The tone and consciousness, the effortless - and chapterless - flow forward
and backward in time, the masterly yoking of her
language to her purpose – Marilynne Robinson is, after all, the finest living
American writer – all of these feature in this excellent piece. It somehow
achieves a pastoral flavor (the book is dedicated to Iowa) amid all the
philosophical grappling and exegesis, Depression subsistence and petty
whorehouse meanness. It’s a tribute to our intrepid author’s skill with her
subject. I unreservedly and unabashedly recommend all three books. Read them in
order for the full reward.
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