No title (2014)

Marilynne Robinson, is a wonderful writer of prose and I enjoyed this book. It does spur me on to read Gilead because the only other Robinson I have read is housekeeping. I appreciated Lila's story and why we needed to return to her tortured life but it did get a tad wearisome. I will write down some of Robinson's prose for later uses though - I especially liked the last 50 pages. ( )

“The medium is the message.” Novels for me seem to be more a pursuit of meaning, while nonfiction is a pursuit of truth, if the two can be separated. No ifs, ands, or buts about it - we humans are meaning makers, and one of the best mediums for finding meaning is story.

And all that being said, Marilynne Robinson is an expert story teller. Lila is appropriately the story of Lila, where she came from, the people who shaped her life, and the love story of her and John Aimes, the protagonist of Robinson’s other book, Gilead.

Most of all, I felt the story pulls you, oddly enough, into the present moment, that is to learn, if only a little, how to be right where you are and to taste and see life as it’s meant to be, a sacred miracle of fallen beauty. For me, it resonated with a calmness of depth, teaching us humility and grace.

I hope that as I get older, I can learn these things more - to be, without the incessant restlessness for influence, to love story and the pursuit of meaning more, perhaps, than the inexhaustible striving for more or better, and most of all, the humility and grace inherent, yet oh so often ignored, within the Christian faith. ( )

Lila is perhaps the most mysterious figure in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead world. How she found John Ames, married him, and bore his child with his impending death looming over him is one of the most touching untold stories of *Gilead.* So Robinson focuses on her, telling the story of a child plucked from abuse and neglect and into a hard life, but one filled with awe and wonder at the very nature of existence. 4.5 stars. ( )

Lila, de cuatro o cinco años, malvive en una casa de obreros inmigrantes en algún punto del Midwest de la década de 1920. Nadie parece preocuparse mucho por ella. Pasa el tiempo acurrucada bajo una mesa hasta que rompe a llorar y alguien la manda fuera de la casa. Un anochecer, una mujer llamada Doll se lleva a Lila. Sobreviven uniéndose a una banda de trabajadores nómadas en busca de empleo mientras el país se sume en la Gran Depresión.
Pasan los años y para Lila la felicidad sigue siendo algo extraño. Doll ha desaparecido de su vida sin saber cómo y ella sigue su deambular, preguntando casa por casa si alguien tiene un trabajo para ella. Un día, para guarecerse de una tormenta, entra en una iglesia del poblado de Gilead mientras el reverendo John Ames pronuncia su sermón. Con el vestido mojado, los ojos tristes, Lila no había nacido para ser una mujer bella.

A pesar de la diferencia de edad y de condición, Lila y el reverendo Ames vivirán una historia de amor como un milagro repentino e inexplicable. Lila huye de un pasado itinerante y brutal, y el reverendo recupera el sentido del amor cuarenta años después de la muerte de su primera mujer.
Lila es la tercera novela protagonizada por los habitantes de Gilead en Iowa, junto a Gilead y En casa publicadas en español por Galaxia Gutenberg en 2011 y 2013. Y con ellas, Marilynne Robinson se ha convertido ya en un clásico viviente de la literatura contemporánea. Ganadora del 'National Book Critics Circle Award' (lecturalia.com) ( )

On completing Lila I could only think 'what a marvelous accomplishment'. I rated Gilead 3 stars, Home 4 stars and Lila 5 stars, not because there was such a significant difference in the novels, but because my appreciation and wonder grew as I read and it was only upon reaching Lila that I could see the whole. The same central characters, the same relationships, portrayed from different times, from different points of view, with the emphasis and focus on different characters, different events and interactions receiving greater or less emphasis and focus, all enriching the whole. I felt as if I was walking in a wide circle looking at the same events from different points along the arc, or that I was taking in an amazing work of art from different angles and distances, but then neither of those analogies captures the dynamic nature of what you are watching. I feel that if I were to start the three novels over, the experience would be very different, in some ways better as I would notice details that had slipped my attention on the first reading, but that the second experience would always be different than the first.

It is fine to evaluate and enjoy these novels individually, but then they should receive a completely different assessment as a whole. The magic of the accomplishment and the reading experience is magnified when viewed as a whole. ( )