Marilynne Robinson’s new novel, “Lila” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), opens in about 1920, and it begins with a shocking action: a woman steals a child. Not that anybody seems to care much. The child, a girl who looks to be four or five, has been deposited by someone (there is no mention of parents) in a house for migrant workers somewhere in the Midwest. Most of the time, she hides under a table, but occasionally she cries, and then she gets pushed out onto the front steps. One night, a woman named Doll, the sole denizen of the house who appears ever to have paid any attention to the girl, returns from work and finds her on the stoop. This time, instead of settling her back inside, Doll carries her…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, Oct-06-14