Marilynne Robinson is a university lecturer, essayist, literary critic, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Award in 2004 for her novel Gilead, set in a small town in rural Iowa. Lila returns to the same characters: the Methodist pastor John Ames and his wife Lila. Gilead was narrated by Ames, in a long letter written to his seven-year-old son. Now his wife tells her story. Lila was born in a lonely house, uncared for, and “stolen” at the age of three by a woman called Doll who saved her and looked after her. With no real upbringing or family, she lived with the homeless, moving on constantly from one place to another, sleeping on the bare ground, going wherever there was work, travelling the length and breadth of America.
It is a striking, harsh story of learning and redemption, which does not hide the crudeness of a life with no family, no home, and almost no love. The goodness and love of a Protestant pastor little by little restores Lila’s humanity, and then gradually opens up her broken and scarred heart to something beyond. In her day-to-day experiences Lila discovers the hidden beauty of the Christian faith through the ordinary life of the rural community, and, without any dramatic conversions, she embraces the faith shared by her husband and the townsfolk.
J.I.P. (Spain)