I have not gotten too far into my summer reading list because I was finishing up a slower paced reading project: Lila: A Novel which completes the Gilead trilogy. Gilead won the Pulitzer several years ago. I posted about it here.
This trilogy is about the families of two preachers in a small town in Iowa. It is heavy on theology which is not an interest of mine but I still enjoyed the books and am glad I read them. Mostly, I appreciated this trilogy because of the books’ overlapping format which I have not come across before. Each book focuses on a different character’s or family’s perspective. They can be read independently but together they fill out the story.
Previously I read Home which I did not post about but is about the family of the other preacher in town, Boughton. Home may have been my favorite despite how slooooww some of it read. It deals with a father’s unconditional love and the pull of and complications of “home” and families.
Lila dives back into the prior life of John Ames’ (preacher #1) wife and how she came to be in Gilead. Her story is fascinating, sad, and inspiring. She is quiet and mysterious in the previous books but now we know who she is and where she came from.
“Her name had the likeness of a name. She had the likeness of a woman, with hands but no face at all, since she never let herself see it. She had the likeness of a life, because she was all alone in it. She lived in the likeness of a house, with walls and a roof and a door that kept nothing in and nothing out.”
This trilogy is a nice project of gift for an introspective reader. If the topics interest you but the slow pace is concerning I recommend multi-booking.