Lila

Right after I finished All the Light We Cannot See, I picked up Lila, by Marilynne Robinson, and read it in two days--the fastest I've ever read something by Robinson. I'd been eager to read it, as it completes a trio of her books set in the small Iowa town of Gilead, which Lila discovers to be a Biblical name after she marries a preacher. As with the other books, I was absolutely gripped by character, by the internal searching, by the simplicity of diction, which gets at the profundity of thought, longing, suffering, and joy. There is a balm in Gilead.

The book was at hand thanks to a fabulous-but-forgotten gift card I received for some committee work a couple years ago. Another, more recent gift card, also set aside for a rainy day, but not forgotten for quite so long, rescued me from running out of writing journals. I am grateful for all I am given, even the stuff I forget.

In case you can't read the small print, that blurb on the Lila cover says Robinson's prose contains "the high loneliness of an old blue grass tune." Yes! And look at those wildflowers. I yearn for my own back yard to look like that someday. Right now it is covered in red and yellow leaves, except for one bare spot I got on Tuesday afternoon. We got the front yard pretty well cleared, but it keeps coming down! As will the temperatures, all too soon...

Makes you want to curl up with a good book. I see that Marilynne Robinson has a new book of essays out, The Givenness of Things, but it may take me a while to get to that. Meanwhile, there's more dense fog in the weather prediction, so another beautiful cloaked morning to wake up in, and maybe another sunny afternoon for raking...