Lila

She said, “I don’t know why I come here. That’s a fact.”  

He shrugged. “Since you are here, maybe you could tell me a little about yourself?”  

She shook her head. “I don’t talk about that. I just been wondering lately why things happen the way they do.”  

“Oh!” he said. “Then I’m glad you have some time to spare. I’ve been wondering about that more or less my whole life.”

I wasn't a huge fan of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead – in which the dying elderly Reverend Ames writes a book-length letter to his seven-year-old son, explaining his own biography and his discoveries about faith – but that was mostly because that book felt a bit dry and didactic; too heavy on the Calvinism, even if that is precisely what the character would be expected to want to impart to the young son he won't be around to guide. Lila returns to the town of Gilead, and from a distancing third-person point-of-view, provides the life story of the Reverend's young wife, Lila, and answers the questions that a reader might have had about how this unlikely pairing came to pass. Despite losing the intimacy of a first-person viewpoint, Robinson perfectly captured what a confusing and maddening time this must have been for them both.

The opening of Lila is heart-breaking and creates immediate empathy with the main character: a little girl is locked outside in the cold and dark with no protection from the elements, and not being able to witness the neglect any longer, Doll (a kind lodger who sleeps on a corner of the floor each night) scoops up the child and walks until she finds a pitying homeowner who will provide some shelter in exchange for work. The girl is slowly nursed back to health, and when she's well enough, Doll names her Lila (if you give her a pretty name she might turn out to be pretty) and takes her along to join up with a small group of migrant workers, led by the authoritarian but trustworthy Doane. Filled in by later flashbacks, we watch as Lila and Doll wake up before dawn, put in long days of picking fruit or weeding fields, walk along to the next job, and fall asleep together, wrapped in Doll's rose-covered shawl: and despite the hard work and instability, they have full bellies and they have each other, and this doesn't seem like a bad life. But then the Crash hits and the fields turn to dust and the farmers who used to welcome Doane's reliable crew are turned mean by their inability to feed their own families – let alone hire outside workers – and Doll is put under inhuman stress to provide for the girl she took responsibility for; a responsibility Lila must eventually take on for herself (if you just act pretty maybe they'll think you're pretty).

In the present day narrative, Lila is an older woman (age unclear, but we know that Reverend Ames and his community think of her as very young) who squats in a shack on the edge of Gilead. Taking shelter from the rain in Ames' church one day, Lila witnesses a baptism and is immediately drawn to the Reverend's grace and authority. Although Lila has an inherent distrust of strangers and a bitter tongue that she uses to maintain distance, she can't help but seek out Ames and the answers that he might be able to provide to the philosophical questions that she begins to have. She knew a little bit about existence. That was pretty well the only thing she knew about, and she learned the word for it from him. Doll was able to put Lila in school just long enough to learn to read and write, so although she isn't illiterate, there's so much she just doesn't know. Lila remembers being laughed at in school because she had never heard of the United States of America – her world was no bigger than the farms she worked on and the roads that connected them – and when she asked Ames to define “firmament” for her, he explained that it's an ancient way of thinking about the sky; as if it were an inverted bowl with the stars and moon painted upon its surface, and she thought to herself, “Ah, so then it isn't”. The most important new learning for Lila, however, involved the notion of damnation and Judgment Day and she just couldn't accept that everyone she had ever known – especially Doll, who had given her everything – was doomed to hell for not believing in a God that they never had the time to stop and think about. In trying to clear this up for Lila, Ames is able to work out his own life-long doubts, and in this way, they prove to be intellectually satisfying to one another.

If the Lord is more gracious than any of us can begin to imagine, and I'm sure He is, then your Doll and a whole lot of people are safe, and warm, and very happy. And probably a little bit surprised.

The plot, focussed as it is on the unschooled thoughts of Lila, can feel claustrophobic, with ideas repeating and circling back upon themselves. And it's frustrating to watch Lila try to keep Ames at a distance – and even he realises that she could abandon him at any time; he only asks her to allow him to see her off on a bus instead of waking to an empty bed. When Lila can't stop the meanness in her that makes her tell Ames that Doll once tried to convince her to marry an old man for the meal ticket, it was heart-breaking to watch Ames shakily accept that that's all he had gotten himself into. That's makes the ending – where Lila says, “I guess there's something the matter with me, old man. I can't love you as I love you. I can't feel as happy as I am.” – feel like grace; redemption.

There was night everywhere and snow, under a big moon. Beyond the few lights of Gilead the great white nowhere that the wind had all to itself, the frozen ponds and stricken cornfields and the ragtag sheds and shacks. The wind would be clapping shut and prying open everything that was meant to keep it out, bothering where it could, tired of its huge loneliness. Had she ever seen a windmill that hadn't lost half itself to the wind, like a blown milkweed? Maybe Doll was out there in some place so much the same that it was like dreaming to remember she was far away, far beyond any number of places with different names but all just the same. And that boy. And Mrs. Ames with her baby. And here were the two of them together in this warm light, the same dread feeding on the same hope, married.

On nearly every page I wanted to mark these long passages to quote: the writing was beautifully lyrical and captured lost Americana in a manner like Steinbeck's East of Eden or Cormac McCarthy's Child of God. Lila is profound and lovely and sheds a more human light on the fictional town of Gilead and the domestic happiness Reverend Ames found so late in life; without ever denying that Lila is simply who she is.

Well, child, Lila thought, I will see you weltering in your blood. And mine. Lonely, frightened, my own child. If the wildness doesn't carry us both away. And if it does.

I liked Lila about as much as I liked The Illuminations and for the same reasons -- they're both a satisfying blend of art and craft -- but so far as the Booker goes, I might give the edge to The Illuminations. Hope I find a five star book on the list yet!

Man Booker Longlist 2015:

Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have a Family

Anne Enright  - The Green Road 

Marlon James  - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Laila Lalami  - The Moor's Account 

Tom McCarthy  - Satin Island 

Chigozie Obioma  - The Fishermen 

Andrew O’Hagan - The Illuminations 

Marilynne Robinso - Lila 

Anuradha Roy - Sleeping on Jupiter

Sunjeev Sahota  - The Year of the Runaways 

Anna Smaill - The Chimes 

Anne Tyler  - A Spool of Blue Thread 

Hanya Yanagihara  - A Little Life 

I was really pleased that A Brief History of Seven Killings took the prize; even more pleased that it didn't go to A Little Life as seemed inevitable.