Book Review: Lila: a Novel

Sometimes a book is so beautifully written it is almost painful.  It is so true and real and raw that it burns as you read it, burns with delicate certainty.Lila: A Novel is that book. Marilynne Robinson is a national treasure. Her use of words is so powerful that it can be overwhelming.  

Lila is, on the surface, a simple story.  Just the backstory of Lila, the preacher's wife in the town of Gilead, Iowa. Robinson's prior novel,Gilead, won the Pulitzer in 2005, and focused on the same town, even including some of the same characters. Gilead too was a beautiful story, brimming with truth and grace. 

But beneath the surface, Lila is so much more. It touches on those issues that are real to each of us: life and death, aging, legacy, morality. It confronts poverty and hopelessness. It presents hard truths about faith, religion, doubt, and hope. 

John Ames, the old preacher, is such a perfectly crafted image of grace. So pure, it seems he sometimes can't touch the realities of the dirty, broken world.  Lila, in her brutal honesty, surviving and suffering, brings such a genuine depiction of doubt and fear that even in her strength she is fragile. 

These two very different people share so many things. They have both faced unspeakable loss. They have both been cocooned in loneliness. They are both more thoughtful and honest than those around them, leading to isolation and want.

There were times I had to stop reading, because the simple story was so raw and sharp, I wept.  

I don't like romance stories, but this is a true love story.  It almost reminded me of Eleanor and Park,

with the sweet, beautiful, organic portrayal of first love and the sheer miserable bliss of it.   In many ways, Lila has that same essence. John and Lila are so very different--the lives they have lived, the comforts they have had, their moral codes--but their love is pure and lovely; watching it grow and develop feels like staring at a light so beautiful,  bright, and hot it hurts your eyes. It hurts your heart, but with a pain that brings with it such powerful beauty and wisdom, it is worth every tear.