This article theorises narrative simultaneity in several key ways. In this way, I also argue that Robinson’s novels are better conceived as partner, parallel, or simultaneous fictions-what Rowan Williams calls “interrelated” (n.p.) narratives or what Sarah Churchwell describes as “companion” or “sibling” (n.p.) texts-than as a chronologically linear series or trilogy. The ingenuity of the Gilead novels is therefore to deepen the reader’s understanding of its characters by occupying one shared fictional location and, to a lesser extent, the same narrative moment in 1956. Although distinct objects of focalisation mean that Gilead, Home, and Lila can be read independently, when read together all three expand the reader’s understanding of the same events without progressing, chronologically, past the end of Gilead. This article examines all three Gilead novels, theorising Robinson’s decision to tell the same story three times. Lila (2014) finally introduces the internal world of an outsider, Ames’s second wife Lila Dahl, who is a marginal presence in Gilead and Home but the central consciousness of the third text in the series.

Robinson’s 2008 novel Home then retells the same events from the household of Ames’s best friend, Reverend Robert Boughton, his dutiful daughter Glory, and wayward son Jack. The Pulitzer-prize-winning Gilead (2004) first tells the story of Reverend John Ames as he contemplates the end of his long religious life in the town. In 2014, the publication of Marilynne Robinson’s fourth novel, Lila, completed a trilogy of books set in the small fictional town of Gilead, Iowa.

Gilead marilynne robinson review