Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 272 pages, $26

“Lila” is a wonderful book, but it is not a mystery, although there is, however briefly, a murder in it. "Lila" is a wonderful book about being dirt poor in the same way "Grapes of Wrath" is a wonderful book about being dirt poor. They are hard to read, but you are not sorry you read them.

To my shame I have tried and not finished both “Housekeeping” and “Gilead," also by Marilynne Robinson. When I started “Lila,” I could not stop reading. Its beautiful story ebbs and flows. In the flows, we slowly learn Lila’s back story, before she wound up in the town of Gilead, the same Gilead and the same Lila from Robinson’s “Gilead.” “Gilead” was Lila’s husband’s story, and “Lila” is most certainly hers.

It has been a long time since I thought to myself, upon finishing a book, that I would like to re-read it. Someday I would like to re-read “Lila.”