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Loading... Lila (original 2014; edition 2014)by Marilynne Robinson
Work InformationLila by Marilynne Robinson (2014)
  
Five star books (22) » 23 more Top Five Books of 2020 (333) Books Read in 2015 (323) Top Five Books of 2018 (270) Top Five Books of 2015 (402) Booker Prize (300) Books Read in 2016 (2,427) Books Read in 2018 (1,957) Books Read in 2020 (2,332) Carole's List (214) Books Read in 2014 (2,089) Books tagged favorites (212) A's favorite novels (56) Spring Books (11) No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) JamesMikealHill | Jan 3, 2025 |  Vrouwenbibliotheek | Dec 30, 2024 | ) erpost | Nov 9, 2024 | This book is written with the most beautiful and elegant prose and for the first few few pages I really was enjoying the book but sadly the structure of the novel didn't work for me. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister and widower, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Firstly I listened to this book on audio and while the narrator was excellent I found the writing style very repetitive and laboured. The story is told from different perspectives and I found it difficult to follow and the flow too interrupted. There is a very strong religious theme in this novel and it certainly belonged in the stroy but I found it a little much at times and again I think if I had read the book I would have understood it more and perhaps enjoyed it better. I was going to switch to paper format halfways through the stroy but did not love the subject matter enough to purchase another book. I did finish the novel and was glad I struck with it because the prose is beautiful and poetic but for me this one just didn't float my boat. This book has great reviews and I am certainly singing from a different hymn sheet on this one. (  ) DemFen | Oct 31, 2024 | Only just seen that there is now “Jack” - definitely going to get that next ! ( ) ClaireBinFrance | Oct 8, 2024 |
 With Lila, Marilynne Robinson completes her mythic cycle, this intimate portrait of an imaginary town filled with very real people. Like her forebears James Joyce, William Faulkner and William Kennedy, among others, Robinson has created a world unto itself, as cleanly evoked as Dublin, Yoknapatawpha County or Albany; only in Robinson’s case, her alternate universe is one of the blessed places of the earth. You don’t need an ounce of faith to be stunned and moved by Lila. God has never been so attractive as he is in Robinson’s depiction, but her heart is with the human experience, in all its forms. Lila and Ames are lonely souls, worn out by sadness and suffering, but they learn how to be together and find salvation, of a sort. Robinson writes Lila in a mystifyingly impressive amalgam of recollection and spontaneously unfolding thought. Sometimes you feel the ideas are being born fresh on the page, and yet they also contain a depth of thinking and feeling that only years of work can summon. Taken together, with Lila as the culmination, these books will surely be read and known in time as one of the great achievements of contemporary literature. An embarrassingly grand statement for such gentle, graceful work. Robinson shakes her finger at whoever she thinks needs to learn a lesson. I’m not saying that great novelists haven’t done this before (see “War and Peace”), only that it didn’t necessarily benefit their work. Robinson writes about religion two ways. One is meliorist, reformist. The other is rapturous, visionary. Many people have been good at the first kind; few at the second kind, at least today. The second kind is Robinson’s forte. Robinson’s determination to shed light on these complexities—the solitude that endures inside intimacy, the sorrow that persists beside joy—marks her as one of those rare writers genuinely committed to contradiction as an abiding state of consciousness. Her characters surprise us with the depth and ceaseless wrinkling of their feelings. Is contained inAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gilead and HousekeepingMarilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic. .No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.06)
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