Previews of Lila
In other news, I am eagerly awaiting the release of Lila, Marilynne Robinson's next novel. The character of Lila was something of an enigma in the earlier novels, and I'm looking forward to her story. How splendid does it sound from these reviews:
Lila is a superb creation ... The courtship of the couple—John Ames: tentative, shy, and awkward; Lila: naïve, suspicious, wary, full of dread—will endure as a classic set piece of character revelation, during which two achingly lonely people discover the comfort of marital love . . . Robinson carefully crafts this provocative and deeply meaningful spiritual search for the meaning of existence. What brings the couple together is a joyous appreciation of the beauty of the natural world and the possibility of grace. —Publishers Weekly
An anguished pastoral, a tableau of decency and compassion that is also an angry and devastating indictment of moral cowardice and unrepentant, unacknowledged sin . . . Beautiful. —A. O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review
And there's also a sneak peak of the text here.