In case you all needed further reason to join Scott Moringiello in reading Marilynne Robinson's new novel, it has just been announced that Lila made the short list for the National Book Award. The other nominees include Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman, and Phil Klay's Redeployment.

But top priority should be given to Robinson. Lila is as good as anything she's written before, and it's very different, stylistically, from the other two Gilead novels. Happy reading, everyone.

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Anthony Domestico is chair of the English and Global Literatures Department at Purchase College, and a frequent contributor to Commonweal. His book Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period is available from Johns Hopkins University Press.

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