Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Mar. 14th, 2025 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_oonmoonThis is the third installment in Robinson's Gilead series, this time focusing on Ames' wife - her past and her early relationship with Ames. Just like the previous two books in the series, Lila is an introspective book. It is filled with compassion and is surprisingly philosophical as Lila grapples with religion and how she can reconcile it with the hardships that she has witnessed and experienced.
Although there were moments in the novel that I felt like I understood what emotion Robinson was trying to evoke, it nevertheless fell short of really making me care enough about Lila. I think this is a case of right book, wrong time. I felt like I was distracted while reading it and I couldn't summon the correct feeling that the book required from me. I found it a bit long-winded and a tad emotional.
It feels unfair to say all that because Lila is an interesting character. So much of the novel is her holding on to her sadness and her past.
This insistence on grief would be frustrating if it didn't feel raw and real. Lila lives her life as if she's afraid to be comfortable and happy. In her head she is under the constant scrutiny of Doll, her adoptive mother. What she imagines Doll would think or say dictates her own thoughts and actions. Through this she justifies staying in Gilead even when she has the constant urge to run away and leave. It's almost as if she's afraid to have her own desires.
Lila spends a lot of her time thinking about the life she has led thus far. She is plagued by the absurdity of existence - that bad things can happen to other people and it would mean nothing to the world at large. That terrible things can happen to you and the laws of nature would not fall apart.
You can probably tell from the quote above that Lila's thoughts can sometimes be hard to follow. There are truths that she knows but can't quite articulate. After spending more time with her and knowing her story, it becomes easier to understand but there are still moments where I've found it hard to get a grip on what she was trying to say. I think that may have contributed to my inability to fully immerse myself in the book.
I think some of the most beautiful parts of the novel is seeing Ames and Lila's affection for each other. It's a subdued kind of love and a little hard to picture but it's one of the things that stood out to me in the novel. I think Robinson is really good at writing about love in all its forms (the love of a parent being one of the best things about Gilead and Home, for example). The tail end of the book summarizes the nuance of their relationship pretty well for me.
Although there were moments in the novel that I felt like I understood what emotion Robinson was trying to evoke, it nevertheless fell short of really making me care enough about Lila. I think this is a case of right book, wrong time. I felt like I was distracted while reading it and I couldn't summon the correct feeling that the book required from me. I found it a bit long-winded and a tad emotional.
It feels unfair to say all that because Lila is an interesting character. So much of the novel is her holding on to her sadness and her past.
[...] how strange and alone she felt, and wanted to feel [...]
This insistence on grief would be frustrating if it didn't feel raw and real. Lila lives her life as if she's afraid to be comfortable and happy. In her head she is under the constant scrutiny of Doll, her adoptive mother. What she imagines Doll would think or say dictates her own thoughts and actions. Through this she justifies staying in Gilead even when she has the constant urge to run away and leave. It's almost as if she's afraid to have her own desires.
When she thought this way, she could almost begin to enjoy her life. She was stealing it, almost, to give it to Doll. People might think she liked the old man's house and the Boughton's clothes and all the proprieties and courtesies. They might think she liked the old man, too. But she just imagined how all of it would seem to Doll - a very good life, a comfortable life that she had because Doll had stolen her, and had taken care of her all those years.
Lila spends a lot of her time thinking about the life she has led thus far. She is plagued by the absurdity of existence - that bad things can happen to other people and it would mean nothing to the world at large. That terrible things can happen to you and the laws of nature would not fall apart.
How could it be that none of it mattered? It was most of what happened. But if it did matter, how could the world go on the way it did when there were so many people living the same and worse? Poor was nothing, tired and hungry were nothing. But people only trying to get by, and no respect for them at all, even the wind soiling them. No matter how proud and hard they were, the wind making their faces run with tears. That was existence, and why didn't it roar and wrench itself apart like the storm it must be, if so much of existence is all that bitterness and fear? Even now, thinking of the man who called himself her husband, what if he turned away from her? It would be nothing. What if the child was no child? There would be an evening and a morning. The quiet of the world was terrible to her, like mockery. She had hoped to put an end of these thoughts, but they returned to her, and she returned to them.
You can probably tell from the quote above that Lila's thoughts can sometimes be hard to follow. There are truths that she knows but can't quite articulate. After spending more time with her and knowing her story, it becomes easier to understand but there are still moments where I've found it hard to get a grip on what she was trying to say. I think that may have contributed to my inability to fully immerse myself in the book.
I think some of the most beautiful parts of the novel is seeing Ames and Lila's affection for each other. It's a subdued kind of love and a little hard to picture but it's one of the things that stood out to me in the novel. I think Robinson is really good at writing about love in all its forms (the love of a parent being one of the best things about Gilead and Home, for example). The tail end of the book summarizes the nuance of their relationship pretty well for me.
"I'm going to make us some more coffee. Did I ever say that? That I love you? I always thought it sounded a little foolish. But the way you talk, sometime I might regret putting it off."
"I believe you said it a minute ago. You can't love me as much as you do love me. Something to that effect. Which I thought was interesting." He said, "All those years, were you as sad as you were sad? As lonely as you were lonely? I wasn't."
"Me neither. I'd have died of it."