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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Have you ever read a paragraph and thought, ‘woah, this should be like 5 paragraphs. There are way too many sentences in one paragraph.’ Yea, that’s this book.
There’s rambling. There’s religion. There’s lots of reflective thoughts. Most importantly, it all runs together. A thought of one person then the next sentence is about something completely different. Sometimes a completely unrelated timeframe. Drove me nuts reading about the reverend and then St. Louis and then doll within 20 words of each other. ‘Pick a topic, stick with it,’ I found myself pleading.
A really great editor should have taken this book and split it into chapters. Dissecting the story, thoughts, ramblings and etc and put them together where they belonged; in a format that was relatable and readable.
Lila is a challenging character and has been challenged by life in many ways. Her story is sad. I would have loved to have read a more cohesive story of her life. From her childhood to adulthood. Small Lila who was taken, revived by a lonely woman, raised on the run and with a group of strangers, Lila the girl who became a woman with so much missing story in between. Lila who married and settled but never really settling within. Lila who becomes a mother but the story leaves us without telling us what becomes of her.
So much missing…
There’s rambling. There’s religion. There’s lots of reflective thoughts. Most importantly, it all runs together. A thought of one person then the next sentence is about something completely different. Sometimes a completely unrelated timeframe. Drove me nuts reading about the reverend and then St. Louis and then doll within 20 words of each other. ‘Pick a topic, stick with it,’ I found myself pleading.
A really great editor should have taken this book and split it into chapters. Dissecting the story, thoughts, ramblings and etc and put them together where they belonged; in a format that was relatable and readable.
Lila is a challenging character and has been challenged by life in many ways. Her story is sad. I would have loved to have read a more cohesive story of her life. From her childhood to adulthood. Small Lila who was taken, revived by a lonely woman, raised on the run and with a group of strangers, Lila the girl who became a woman with so much missing story in between. Lila who married and settled but never really settling within. Lila who becomes a mother but the story leaves us without telling us what becomes of her.
So much missing…
I feel unworthy to write anything at all about this richly rewarding rumination of grace, love and dignity. I only give thanks for its beauty and for the sheer good fortune of closing out my reading year in such a meaningful way. If literature can be a religion, I am truly blessed.
It took a while to get into it and to get used to the writing style (stream of consciousness with no chapter breaks), but once I did, I discovered just how beautiful a writer Robinson is. In Lila, the title character serves as the narrator and we learn about her entire life, including the love, grace and redemption she finds in Gilead. There is a beautiful spiritual aspect to the book that touches your heart and soul and reminds you of the big, important questions we have all asked at one time or another.
I wonder if I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd read the book Gilead first, in the order they were written.
Highly recommended.
I wonder if I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd read the book Gilead first, in the order they were written.
Highly recommended.
lila's beautiful, like the other two books, but it left me feeling like i was never understanding the true nature of any of the events being told. it feels incomplete to me sometimes, like i could never dig deep enough, but it makes sense in the context of who and what the book is about, which makes it feel alright, like that's just the way it is. lila didn't really know anything, and the old man never really knew anything either, despite how different their pasts were, and that's just how strange existence is...
this doesn't make any sense but read the book anyways.
this doesn't make any sense but read the book anyways.
What would it be like to have limited vocabulary with which to phrase our thoughts? Would we then have limited thoughts? Or would our thoughts instead be clearer for the lack of words to muddy them?
Such are the questions that occur to us as we read this account of a homeless woman called Lila, a woman without a surname or knowledge of what country she lives in—except that it’s good country for growing crops—but who knows perfectly her place in the world nevertheless. A woman unaware of the existence of the concept ‘existence’ but who still knows more than most about staying alive against the odds, about facing death with equanimity.
At the beginning of this book, Lila’s former life of wandering is over. It has come to an end because she stepped inside a church one day to shelter from the rain. The seeking of shelter leads to her choosing a settled life with a man who is particularly full of thoughts and words, thoughts and words being the tools of his trade. John Ames is the elderly pastor of Gilead and he’s a character whom readers of some of Marilynne Robinson’s other books already know. We had already met Lila too but only as a shadowy presence on the edge of every scene in those books. Her former life was hinted at but Robinson cleverly left much of Lila’s story a complete mystery; she clearly had plans for Lila from the beginning.
The earlier books each presented different facets of John Ames’ character. In [b:Gilead|68210|Gilead (Gilead, #1)|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558681761l/68210._SY75_.jpg|2481792], which is written in the form of a letter from Ames to his and Lila’s young son we get to know Ames through his memories of his father and grandfather and his own youth and life. The picture that emerges is of a mostly thoughtful and kind man, very committed to his faith, but we remember that this is a first person narrative and we know not to completely trust his account of everything.
In [b:Home|2924318|Home|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426188598l/2924318._SX50_.jpg|2951639], we see Ames among his parishioners and friends, in particular the Baughton family who live next door. [b:Home|2924318|Home|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426188598l/2924318._SX50_.jpg|2951639] is a third person narrative, mostly from the point of view of Glory, Robert Boughton’s daughter, who cares for her elderly father (this is Mid West America sometime in the 1950s). As we see Ames mingle with the various members of his friend Robert’s large family, we discover different aspects of his personality.
In [b:Lila|20575411|Lila|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393645345l/20575411._SX50_.jpg|26208371], the other characters fade from the picture and we get a completely fresh angle on John Ames. In the course of this book, the man who has spent his life writing and preaching sermons, advising others how to think and speak, has to learn how to think and speak himself all over again. To understand Lila and to be understood by her, everything he believes in, the way he phrased what he thought he knew, has to be reexamined.
It’s rare for me to be truly moved by the words I read. I enjoy words tremendously, I look under them and over them and through them but they rarely cause my eyes to well up with tears. Although Robinson carefully avoids any attempt to trade on the emotional content of her story, the hesitant words that Lila and John Ames exchange as they seek to understand the meaning of the other’s almost unknowable existence moved me intensely.
What Robinson has done here is deeply, deeply interesting—not the creation of a love story between a young woman and an elderly man—but the examination from scratch of the meaning of life.
Such are the questions that occur to us as we read this account of a homeless woman called Lila, a woman without a surname or knowledge of what country she lives in—except that it’s good country for growing crops—but who knows perfectly her place in the world nevertheless. A woman unaware of the existence of the concept ‘existence’ but who still knows more than most about staying alive against the odds, about facing death with equanimity.
At the beginning of this book, Lila’s former life of wandering is over. It has come to an end because she stepped inside a church one day to shelter from the rain. The seeking of shelter leads to her choosing a settled life with a man who is particularly full of thoughts and words, thoughts and words being the tools of his trade. John Ames is the elderly pastor of Gilead and he’s a character whom readers of some of Marilynne Robinson’s other books already know. We had already met Lila too but only as a shadowy presence on the edge of every scene in those books. Her former life was hinted at but Robinson cleverly left much of Lila’s story a complete mystery; she clearly had plans for Lila from the beginning.
The earlier books each presented different facets of John Ames’ character. In [b:Gilead|68210|Gilead (Gilead, #1)|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558681761l/68210._SY75_.jpg|2481792], which is written in the form of a letter from Ames to his and Lila’s young son we get to know Ames through his memories of his father and grandfather and his own youth and life. The picture that emerges is of a mostly thoughtful and kind man, very committed to his faith, but we remember that this is a first person narrative and we know not to completely trust his account of everything.
In [b:Home|2924318|Home|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426188598l/2924318._SX50_.jpg|2951639], we see Ames among his parishioners and friends, in particular the Baughton family who live next door. [b:Home|2924318|Home|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426188598l/2924318._SX50_.jpg|2951639] is a third person narrative, mostly from the point of view of Glory, Robert Boughton’s daughter, who cares for her elderly father (this is Mid West America sometime in the 1950s). As we see Ames mingle with the various members of his friend Robert’s large family, we discover different aspects of his personality.
In [b:Lila|20575411|Lila|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393645345l/20575411._SX50_.jpg|26208371], the other characters fade from the picture and we get a completely fresh angle on John Ames. In the course of this book, the man who has spent his life writing and preaching sermons, advising others how to think and speak, has to learn how to think and speak himself all over again. To understand Lila and to be understood by her, everything he believes in, the way he phrased what he thought he knew, has to be reexamined.
It’s rare for me to be truly moved by the words I read. I enjoy words tremendously, I look under them and over them and through them but they rarely cause my eyes to well up with tears. Although Robinson carefully avoids any attempt to trade on the emotional content of her story, the hesitant words that Lila and John Ames exchange as they seek to understand the meaning of the other’s almost unknowable existence moved me intensely.
What Robinson has done here is deeply, deeply interesting—not the creation of a love story between a young woman and an elderly man—but the examination from scratch of the meaning of life.
I certainly won't detract from my excessive praise for Marilynne Robinson (see my review of [b:Home|2924318|Home (Gilead, #2)|Marilynne Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426188598l/2924318._SX50_.jpg|2951639]), but I had a bit more trouble with this third part of the Gilead series. Once again Robinson changes the perspective, now to Lila, the young wife of the much older reverend John Ames. As an orphan she has had a quite poor and eventful childhood, living the life of a vagabond, ending up in a marginal gang, and even in a brothel. The atmosphere in this novel is strongly reminiscent of John Steinbeck, with even explicit references to the Depression and Dust Bowl period (i.e. the 1930s) that is so powerfully drawn in [b:The Grapes of Wrath|18114322|The Grapes of Wrath|John Steinbeck|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1375670575l/18114322._SY75_.jpg|2931549].
During her lonely wanderings, Lila by chance ends up in Gilead, Iowa, and thus inevitably comes into contact with Reverend John Ames, who had lost his wife and child a long while ago and seemed exhausted. Ames and Lila seem like two extremes: he a thoughtful, struggling intellectual, she a rude and bruised orphan girl. Yet a moving dynamic arises between the two; the way they interact is so careful, thoughtful, and tactful that it almost physically hurts to follow. Quite unexpectedly, for both of them, they even get married. Surprising also for the reader, because we constantly see Lila deliberating whether she should move on or not. Even when she becomes pregnant by Ames those doubts remain, and the great thing is that Ames appears to be all too aware of them.
Especially in the second half of the book, Lila continues to muse about her turbulent past, about the dramatic events in it, and about the main characters of that period, especially her surrogate mother Doll. That past continues to pull at her persistently, especially because of the knife she received from Doll, with which the latter had stabbed to death a man who might have been Lila's father. The Calvinist religious-moral framework in which Robinson places her stories obviously plays an important role in all this. From that light, you can see Lila as a kind of Mary Magdalene, who is carefully guided by Ames to the right path, but who also has a moral compass that is so strong that, eventually, she can appreciate the uniqueness of what is happening between them. From Lila's point of view, there is the constant threat of damnation, a pull to evil even, that she actively struggles with. And with that Robinson brings us to territory that is pretty familiar to her.
Once again: this third Gilead part also plays at a very high level in terms of literature, and in terms of content, the sketch of Lila's gradual redemption is particularly existentially relevant. But I did have some difficulty with the structure of this novel: the accumulation of constant flashbacks and streams of consciousness make this book very difficult to read. In 'Home' you still had the sublime dialogues between the protagonists to keep the story bearable, and that is much more lacking here, especially in the second half of the book. Hence my slightly lower rating. But that does not detract from the fact that Robinson with Lila has created a character that, in terms of psychological and existential depth, can compete with the most striking of Greek or Shakespearean tragedies.
During her lonely wanderings, Lila by chance ends up in Gilead, Iowa, and thus inevitably comes into contact with Reverend John Ames, who had lost his wife and child a long while ago and seemed exhausted. Ames and Lila seem like two extremes: he a thoughtful, struggling intellectual, she a rude and bruised orphan girl. Yet a moving dynamic arises between the two; the way they interact is so careful, thoughtful, and tactful that it almost physically hurts to follow. Quite unexpectedly, for both of them, they even get married. Surprising also for the reader, because we constantly see Lila deliberating whether she should move on or not. Even when she becomes pregnant by Ames those doubts remain, and the great thing is that Ames appears to be all too aware of them.
Especially in the second half of the book, Lila continues to muse about her turbulent past, about the dramatic events in it, and about the main characters of that period, especially her surrogate mother Doll. That past continues to pull at her persistently, especially because of the knife she received from Doll, with which the latter had stabbed to death a man who might have been Lila's father. The Calvinist religious-moral framework in which Robinson places her stories obviously plays an important role in all this. From that light, you can see Lila as a kind of Mary Magdalene, who is carefully guided by Ames to the right path, but who also has a moral compass that is so strong that, eventually, she can appreciate the uniqueness of what is happening between them. From Lila's point of view, there is the constant threat of damnation, a pull to evil even, that she actively struggles with. And with that Robinson brings us to territory that is pretty familiar to her.
Once again: this third Gilead part also plays at a very high level in terms of literature, and in terms of content, the sketch of Lila's gradual redemption is particularly existentially relevant. But I did have some difficulty with the structure of this novel: the accumulation of constant flashbacks and streams of consciousness make this book very difficult to read. In 'Home' you still had the sublime dialogues between the protagonists to keep the story bearable, and that is much more lacking here, especially in the second half of the book. Hence my slightly lower rating. But that does not detract from the fact that Robinson with Lila has created a character that, in terms of psychological and existential depth, can compete with the most striking of Greek or Shakespearean tragedies.
Not a book I would typically choose, the main character Lila has a very harsh life and although the story could easily be depressing, it is not. Lila has an understated dignity and strength that she is unaware of, an inner beauty that 'the pastor' sees, loves and cherishes. It is one of those rare books where as I near the end I loathe for it TO end. If I were reading, rather than listening to it I am sure when I closed the cover for the last time I would do so quietly, almost reverently, passing my hand over it in a quiet salutation.