LILA

Lila is a complex character, a smart but essentially feral child-woman. It would take a wise and subtle actor to find the right audio voice for her jumpy, puzzled, contradictory inner life, and Maggie Hoffman is not that actor. She consistently misses where the emotional weight of a sentence lies, rushing through each one as if it contained mere data, not surprise, revelation, or narrative power. She swallows words and allows no breathing space around sentences or speeches that would pack a wallop on the page. Nor does she come anywhere close to a believable voice for Lila's elderly preacher husband, John Ames, familiar to Robinson's fans from two earlier novels. Those fans will be better served by reading the book with their eyes. B.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2014]