Life is what it is....

This isn't a book for everyone, it's a book for thinkers, those who think about God, life, and what iife is all about. Life is what it is is the mantra I took away from the story. A sequel to the author's Pulitzer Prize winning "Gilead", it's also set in Gilead, Iowa with mostly the same characters. This book, however, focuses on Lila, one of the minor characters in the book Gilead. The author has worked at the University of Iowa and its Writers Workshop for the last 25 years. She's a thinker, an intellectual and this, and her other books, are a reflection of the believes she has developed over her lifetime. The author is a member of the United Church of Christ and a follower of the teachings of John Calvin. The more I learned about her in researching her life, it came to me that this is her way to put what she thinks about life and religion into a book as a parable set in a fictional small Iowa town. If you enjoy her books and what they are saying it makes you want to know more.

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Beautifully Written To A Fault

Lila is an exquisite book. It’s so well written. The prose is poetic. It’s religious and spiritual. I am sure that some book society somewhere is waiting with bated breath to give it a critical award. Is it a timely book written for the modern reader? I am not so sure.

This is the third of a trilogy written by the legendary Marilynne Robinson. All of these books take place in the town of Gilead, Iowa. In the first book, Gilead, Robinson writes about faith and Christianity using stories about the town and its minister as characters in her parables. In Home, the same minister is near death, writes a letter about his life to help his son with his struggles with alcoholism. Lila, a prequel, is a story about the unlikely marriage of a very elderly minister and a young drifter. Do not be mistaken in thinking that since this is a prequel you will be able to start this novel then go on to the other two. I was clearly lost for the first few chapters of Lila. I am not fond of books that throw the reader in the deep end, expecting them to figure out how they got here and how to save themselves at the same time.

Lila is a feral child born in the depression. Unloved by her natural family for no given reason, she is taken and cared for by a drifter, with little means of support, named Doll. Eventually, Lila crosses paths with the elderly generous minister whom saves her from her profound loneliness and they share a depth of love and faith that few see in their lifetime. At times each is the more learned, the needier and the more giving.

You will not read a better written book. Will this slow moving somber character study keep your interest is a question that I am feeling was the least important consideration of the author when writing this book.

15 people found this helpful

A beautiful story of love and God's grace

This is the story of Lila, a vagrant working her way day by day through Iowa during the 1930's and '40's, and how her life is affected by the kindness and casual cruelty of the strangers that she meets. Even Lila is not sure who she really is; all she knows is what she has been told by a woman named Doll who rescued her from neglect and mistreatment. We never know any more about Lila's or Doll's origins than Lila herself knows, and we find that don't need to know more. Ms Robinson writes with deep respect and love for the poor -- those who live from hard-working hand to desperate mouth. Eventually Lila meets Reverend John Ames, an elderly minister who has lost both his wife and his young son. The two fall in love, marry, and have a child, knowing that John may not live long enough to see the boy grow up. The growth of their love, of Lila's quest to understand her place in the world, and of John's struggles to reconcile his Calvinist faith with the lives around him and his own lived experience are beautifully and sensitively told both in Robinson's writing and in Maggie Hoffman's reading.

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As Good As It Gets

What about Maggie Hoffman’s performance did you like?

It's hard to pinpoint, but hard to forget. She has a gentle voice and a slight Southern lilt that accents the entire story.

Any additional comments?

Having loved and admired Gilead and Home, I was a little nervous about Lila, wondering whether Robinson could possibly live up to the high standards she’d set for herself in the Gilead novels. The first several pages had me disappointed – Lila in a setting very different from the Gilead I’d come to feel I knew very well – and then the lights switched on: it became clear to me that the point of Lila is that she has no history. At best, she has snatches of memory, but they’re deeply personal, without names that have consequence. (The name she takes is a mistake, an accidental appropriation of the first name of the woman who kidnaps her as a child, and at least one later person thinks she is Norwegian because of it.) She is, in other words, a blank book.
That’s an intriguing premise on its own, and Robinson does some striking things with it. Lila has so little sense of who she is or where she’s been that she has to discover, almost in literal fashion (as she learns its name only late in childhood) the United States of America. She is a latecomer who is also a native, someone unmistakably of the nation and yet needing to learn bit by bit what that means. And she does that learning through her early travels and through her later conversations with Ames over the Bible. She is, again almost literally, a child of God, someone profoundly innocent and yet perpetually threatened by the world.

I’d call that a success on its own terms if that all this were. Put it in conversation with Gilead, though, and it’s mind-blowing. To my eyes at least, Gilead is the story of a man trying to negotiate a too-thick history surrounding him. He has to try to live up to the legacy of his abolitionist grandfather, a man who has almost certainly committed murder in the name of freeing the slaves, and the simultaneous legacy of his pacifist father who rejected that violence. Ames has lived too long in his town, outlived all that originally defined him with the sole exception of Boughton, his life-long friend and fellow minister. They have had a deep and rich friendship (and that friendship is one of the great literary inventions I’ve come across in at least the last decade) but it has always been framed through text, through their shared and diverging senses of what scripture tells them to do in this odd post-World War II world.

Anyway, Ames is a man steeped in history, a man so aware of it – and simultaneously so aware of his imminent departure from it through death – that he creates a manuscript to record it for his son who is as yet too young to learn it firsthand. He cannot escape text, even as he understands himself to be slowly dying; he writes of his life for his son, a life so steeped in history that he can’t frame it through the experience of his own personal history.
When you put those two into conversation – Gilead and Lila – it becomes the same story told with entirely different premises, one so dependent on history it can’t understand itself without it and the other so empty of history that it cannot initially find its bearings. Throw in the terrific ethical complications of Home, where we learn that Ames, while still deeply intent on being a good man, has not always managed to be the decent person his full faith calls him to be. (I’m giving Home short shrift; it’s as beautiful as the others, and it negotiates history more at the level of the family and the community rather than in the generational scope of Gilead or the narrowly personal of Lila.)

As if all that weren’t enough, Ames is such a staggering decent and ethical presence that he finds a way to enter into conversation with Lila in a way that is not condescending. In an America of Biblical literalists who claim direct access to the divine – and who have more or less successfully hijacked the mantle of the great mainline Protestant traditions that built so much of the American ethic – Ames comes across as almost too good to be true: a man whose deep self-doubt is only barely conquered by his even deeper religious faith.

He discovers a belated chance at happiness in his meeting with Lila, and he makes the most of it, redeeming her from the mystery of her childhood and the ignorance of history. He does so only slowly and imperfectly, and only through his inspiring patience and love. In all, he comes across as a latter day Protestant saint, one of those quiet and pious people unsullied by sanctimony, who, always rare, would be nearly unrecognizable in an America that treats religion as a checklist of socio-political positions or, worse, a badge of unassailable license to judge others.

There’s a greatness in Ames, and it rubs off on all who enter his orbit. He isn’t perfect, but the beauty of his faith is that he recognizes that sooner and more deeply than anyone else. I find Gilead and Lila together echoing one of my favorite novels of all time, Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, for the way it makes a good man’s faith something palpable in a world that can barely recognize it.

Bottom line, Robinson has really done it. If she isn’t the greatest American writer of the moment, then I don’t know who is. (Maybe, still, the very different Jonathan Lethem?)

5 people found this helpful

Another beautiful exploration of the way

One human can awake and draw out the light hidden deep within even the darkest heart. Thank you merrilyne robinson

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"Salvation by grace"

Calvinism in reference to "predestination" was cited in the first two books ("Gilead" and "Home") including a a passage in "HOME" describing Lila's piqued interest of the subject during a porch interpretation setting the stage for this book. Lila" is a book that will stay with you long after the last read or listened to word: melancholy, heartbreaking, still with elements of hope and hard driven faith and yes...predestination/predetermination or "fate". The narrator captured all the characters nuances. I am hoping for one more "Gilead" book.

2 people found this helpful

Lovely poetic language, confusing storyline

What did you like best about Lila: A Novel? What did you like least?

The language used is lovely, lilting and evocative and the characters are well drawn.That said, I absolutely hated the way the narrative jumped with the life span of the main character and also the lack of rationale behind many of the characters' actions. None of this book made sense to me. I want more rationality and less mysticism and preaching in my novels. Yes, this book is filled with Christian talk and references which I understand but do not appreciate. This would have been a great novel but Robinson needed to share with me some of the motivations behind her characters. I'm no slacker - I majored in English Lit in college and graduated with Honors, etc. This just wasn't my cup of literary tea.

Would you be willing to try another book from Marilynne Robinson? Why or why not?

Seems like this book is fairly typical of Ms. Robinson's books and, as such, I would not choose to read another book by her.

Have you listened to any of Maggie Hoffman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, this was the first novel by Ms. Hoffman for me.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Nope. It would be boring as heck.

Any additional comments?

This novel kind of reminded me of the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez which I also detest. If you like him, you might like this novel as well.

2 people found this helpful

Terrific.

I loved Gillead but perhaps this is the better book. Deep theological themes and discussion wrapped in an engrossing story.

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An outstanding book

Lila is written with subtle brilliance.
It is not to be missed. The recording is excellent. As good as Gilead.

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The narrator made this 5 stars!

What made the experience of listening to Lila: A Novel the most enjoyable?

The narrator was excellent!

What about Maggie Hoffman’s performance did you like?

Everything. She did each voice perfectly!

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It was good…no extremes.

Any additional comments?

I highly recommend.

1 person found this helpful