Here’s a novel of memory, one where the end feels like the beginning. Marilynne Robinson retells the creation story through “Lila,” lovingly following the principle character through a hard road of suffering and joy, the radical shift to marriage, and a taste of the pleasure of rest. Robinson weaves scripture from Ezekiel and Job through the narration and ultimately Lila’s thought process in this third person limited story. Lila’s experience forms and becomes more articulate in light of Doll and John’s kindness, just as the world came into shape and flourished as God made distinctions among it and called the parts by name. This particular exploration of creation frames the reader’s understanding of Doll and John’s kindness, rendering it uniquely meaningful and mysterious.
Lila clings first to Doll, then Reverend Ames. The woman gives her life shape, with gifts of food and kindness, interrupting the weltering of the people in the cabin who neglect Lila. Wanting peace and not knowing even the name for it, the people there fight themselves quiet, and Lila cries herself to sleep. Doll gives her a rag baby, and Lila treasures it, whispering to it and holding it close to her. She leaves it on accident when they leave, when Doll steals Lila away from the violence and neglect to give her the potential to continue living.
Doll finds temporary haven with a kind woman, who feeds them and allows them to weather the storm till Lila is not so sick. The whole time Doll treasures Lila, holds her close, whispers to her and feeds her. After that Doll takes Lila among those that scurry among the earth, among Doane and his people, about whom he declares “we ain’t tramps, we ain’t Gypsies, we ain’t wild Indians.” Doll says they are just folks. The band follow him because he takes care of them, earns their trust and the trust of those from whom he finds work. With the Great Crash – seating the early part of the novel in the 1920s – the group falls apart. All the while Lila sleeps close to Doll, under the shawl from the first nice woman, and Doll whispers “Live”.
After Doll, and after the darkness of St. Louis, Lila lands in Gilead, and desperate as she is, finally walks in the church doors, straight into the sight of Reverend John Ames. The widower, a silvery preacher who takes off his hat in the rain to greet women, courts her like a shy boy. Once married, he teaches her when she brings questions from reading and thinking. The puzzling poetry of Ezekiel and Job resonate with Lila, but she calls attention to the absurdity in the parts John assumes he knows, to what we assume we know. Robinson amazingly sheds her highly educated and well-fed lifestyle, and dives into the perspective of a woman who carries around a claw of a knife in her garter and eats spuds from the ashes.
This sort of Adam, whom Robinson provides for Lila, gives her names for her experience, such as Welter and Existence. These help her make sense of the world around her, and her place in it. Robinson’s project, it seems, is Lila sorting through her memories and the reconciling the shame of them. While shuffling back and forth between past and present advances the narrative for the first half, the latter portions lags as Robinson gets lost in Lila’s memories. There is merit to the suspended build-up produced, but the mental roaming nearly stagnates some sections.
As she starts to learn of eternity, grappling with the probable damnation of many people she knew, she begins to find calm amongst the pain, though she may run off at any point, steal a child as was her fantasy, and go back to just being folks, the life she knew.
At one point when she wonders about leaving, she stops and thinks, “That old man loves me. I got to figure out what to do about it.” She loves him in her own way, trying to figure marriage out. Lila has no model of marriage to imitate, except from the movies. Doane and Marcelle had something special, something intimate like the inside joke Doll and Lila shared. Though previously married, John is no better off. Being a widower left John with the notion that Wife is a prayer, Child is a prayer.
He sneaks prayers, just as he sneaks in baptizing her in front of the congregation along with the child she holds. With the three touches of water Robinson opens a mystery not even the river water could wash, “a birth and a death and a marriage…a whole life.”
“Lila” by Marilynne Robinson. 261 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $26.00.
Alex Graham is a senior majoring in English.
