Lila

Lila is one of four books in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series. These titles include Gilead (2004), Home (2008), Lila (2014), and Jack (2020). While each book in the series functions as a standalone novel, they all take place in the same narrative universe. They can also be categorized as companions to one another. This means that the settings and characters from the series’ original title, Gilead, recur in the subsequent novels. Because the titles all take place in the same fictional world of Gilead, Iowa, many narrative and thematic overlaps exist between them. The conflicts and themes established in Gilead, for example, reappear and develop in Home, Lila, and Jack.

Gilead follows the story of Reverend John Ames. The novel is written in the form of a letter the dying preacher is writing to his young son. In the narrative present, John is an elderly man who is married to the young Lila Dahl, with whom he has a six-year-old child. This new family has revived John since the passing of his first wife, Louisa, and their infant child. John is devastated that he is ailing and won’t get to see his son grow up. He writes him a letter to clarify much of his past for his son. The letter reveals other details about John’s life, too, including his fraught relationship with his best friend Robert Boughton’s son, John Ames Boughton, or Jack. Jack is a pariah in Gilead because of his fraught past, and John resents that Jack was named after him. Over the course of the novel, however, he learns more about who Jack really is.

In the second novel, Home, Robinson revisits many of the same conflicts and stakes from Gilead. However, Home follows Robert Boughton’s daughter Glory Boughton’s story. When Robert falls ill, Glory and her brother Jack return home to care for him. Glory and Jack have a fraught relationship and initially struggle to reconnect. The longer they are home together, the more time they spend in conversation, and the more differences they overcome. They challenge one another’s political beliefs and share many of their secrets. Jack reveals that he is married to a Black woman named Della, with whom he has a son named Robert. Glory reveals that she hasn’t been honest with the family either. Despair overcomes Jack when Della does not respond to his letters. He flees Gilead shortly before Della and Robert appear in town looking for him. Glory doesn’t know where her brother has gone but does her best to welcome Della and Robert to town.

The third novel, Lila, traces Reverend John Ames’s second wife Lila Dahl’s story. The novel similarly toys with point of view and form, to explore themes of memory, loss, and family. This novel offers a new entry point to the Gilead universe, which primarily centers around the Boughtons’ nuclear family.

In the fourth and final instalment in the series, Jack, Robinson follows Jack’s story prior to his return to Gilead. The novel depicts Jack’s life in St. Louis, where he meets and becomes involved with Della. The novel subtextually explores the racial tension that defined the 1950s, and particularly centralizes the illegality of interracial marriages. Jack seeks to humanize Jack Boughton’s character, who is regarded as a troublemaker throughout the series.