Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I am feeling so relieved to have finally, finally, after years and years, finished the Gilead trilogy with reading this and Home. Each are so beautifully written and so thoughtful and stunning. I have to say that I think Gilead is my favorite, because of its beautiful depiction of a father writing to his son, and all of the love that you can feel in Robinson's writing and descriptions. But Home was beautiful too, with its look at Jack Boughton and his attempt to come home, and Lila seemed like Robinson's attempt to explain the concept of grace and existence and why things are the way they are. Lila is the Reverend John Ames's wife, and she seems almost like a non-entity in the other books--not really a non-entity, but just a quiet shadow who is interesting because of the little you know about her, but who doesn't say very much and who you never know very much about her thoughts (except that scene in Home where she interrupts the two old ministers' arguing about predestination and says very calmly that "people can change." I loved that). But this book gives you her whole story, slowly, in pieces, mixed in with the story of how she met the Reverend John Ames and how they got married, up until the time their baby was born, and how she began to try to reconcile her past life with her new married life, and her old beliefs with what her reverend husband is preaching every Sunday. She is especially concerned with the idea that they will someday be judged based on their actions, as she thinks about the woman who raised her, who did so many things judged to be wrong (particularly killing someone), but who she knows was good and who loved her when no one else did, and who she wants to be with after she dies. Lila isn't learned, but she slowly begins to put together what she believes and what she knows, and it is these musings mixed with her recollections and stories about her life, that she remembers and that she whispers/thinks to herself and her new baby, that make up the whole of this book.

I think the last few pages are so beautiful, and true. They sum up the whole story, and are worth typing up here. I think this is what Robinson does so beautifully--she writes the truth in such a beautiful way. I believe this wholeheartedly--people worry so much about having "no empty seats" and about people not making it to heaven, but I believe that this is true, that God will be kinder and more generous than we can imagine in every way.

"In eternity people's lives could be altogether what they were and had been, not just the worst things they ever did, or the best things either. So she decided that she should believe in it, or that she believed in it already. How else could she imagine seeing Doll again? Never once had she taken her to be dead, plain and simple. If any scoundrel could be pulled into heaven just to make his mother happy, it couldn't be fair to punish scoundrels who happened to be orphans, or whose mothers didn't even like them, and who would probably have better excuses for the harm they did than the ones who had somebody caring about them. It couldn't be fair to punish people for trying to get by, people who were good by their own lights, when it took all the courage they had to be good...
"There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them. Doll hunched in the firelight whetting her courage, dreaming vengeance because she knew someone somewhere was dreaming vengeance against her. Thinking terrible thoughts to blunt her own fear.
"That's how it is. Lila had borne a child into the world where a wind could rise that would take him from her arms as if there were no strength in them at all. Pity us, yes, but we are brave, she thought, and wild, more life in us than we can bear, the fire infolding itself in us. That peace could only be amazement, too."

I will say that I loved this, loved the writing and loved the message, but it took me forever to get through it. Robinson's writing is wonderful, but she does not write page-turners. It takes mental energy to sit down and work through them, and I didn't devote the time to her books. It took me a month to get through the first half of this book, then I just sat down and polished off the second half tonight because I couldn't leave it any longer. I enjoyed it once I set my mind to it, but there's nothing quick or easy about her writing.