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Lila: A Novel Hardcover – October 7, 2014

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Marilynne Robinson (Author)
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Marilynne Robinson (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 1,061 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 7, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374187614
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374187613
  • Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,061 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThe perfect bookend to Gilead and Home
By fryjord on October 9, 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Gilead and Home are two of my favorite novels, so I could not have been more excited when Lila arrived at my doorstep. The character of Lila (Reverend Ames' wife) remained somewhat of a mystery in both the earlier novels. She was the much younger, loving wife of the wonderful Reverend Ames, but she was a woman with a private past that even her much older husband knew little about. This book fills in the character of Lila and begins with her as a 5 year-old girl crying outside a house with no one there to help her. She gets saved by Doll, and they develop a sweet maternal relationship that shapes the rest of her life.

Ultimately, Robinson might be my favorite writer. I do not have a religious bone in my body, but I find myself returning to Gilead again and again just to read Reverend Ames' thoughts on the world. And Robinson is also such an understanding, empathetic writer. In Home, Jack Boughton's struggles with religion and predestination shape the novel, but she refuses to condemn him for his atheism. Lila is a third piece to that puzzle about a woman uneasy with religion but read to engage with the questions it raises.

So yeah...these three novels have deeply affected me. The prose in Lila is as beautiful as her three earlier novels, and at points, possibly even more beautiful. Lila's torment gives Robinson the chance to do things with languages few people in the history of writing have been able to do. I recommend it highly.
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4.0 out of 5 starsLife and the Divine, as Perceived by a Near-Feral Woman
By Lynne Spreen on October 10, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
There are no chapters in this book. Is this a literary conceit, as in a writer playfully breaking rules, or is she making a point that what she has to say is so important that chapters might interfere with concentration? Since Robinson will never be accused of playfulness, and I don't sense she's dictatorial, I offer a third possibility: the lack of chapters (although there are section breaks) may be metaphoric. Because once you get into the story, you will become a wanderer, compelled to the journey, hungering for some bit of plot but only receiving as much as is necessary to give you enough energy to continue. You will be fed by stunningly compassionate depictions of the apparent worst in human behavior, and by contemplations of the divine, such that this will allow you to continue on through the sparse landscape that is Lila.

One of the high points for me, a reader who counts Gilead as one of her top five books of all time, was the return of the good Reverend Ames. This thoughtful, open-minded, generous man sees Lila as a gift, not only for her companionship but as a window into another dimension of human life and spirituality. Because while Lila is only a few degrees removed from feral, she is bright and curious, and her perspective is riveting if bleak. Indeed, her intellect causes her intense pain, hungering as she does for understanding about life on earth and her place in it - as don't we all. In this, as with Ames' tortured acceptance of his own mortality and that of his friend Boughton, the book touches universal chords.

This story primarily consists of internal monologue, and much of it is oblique, so if you are not drawn to that kind of writing, this may not be for you.Read more ›
32 Comments 219 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 stars"Whatever happens, just be quiet, and it'll pass, most likely."
By Amelia Gremelspacher TOP 1000 REVIEWER on October 8, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Lila voices that part of us that is fundamentally alone, and preternaturally outside the the bounds of society. I love this character. She is not the least cuddly in her wildness, and she knows only how to stand in the world she has learned. Marilynne Robinson has mastered that archetype of the loner ruled only by the internal truths of her ties to nature. Robinson has returned to Gilead, a poor town on the verge of collapsing to the surrounding wilderness, resisting only with the basic decency of its citizens. Robinson has woven a moral fiber which embraces the Bible as it is woven into the rules of empathy and natural order.

Lila was born into the ultimately neglectful family. She was found by Doll, alone on a porch and half dead at age of four. She and Doll wander the world in the days preceding the Dust Bowl. "Doll my have been the loneliest woman in the world, and she was the loneliest child." They were ruled by "Whatever happens, just be quiet, and it'll pass, most likely." We find her years later, aged by the places she has seen, drawn to the world of Gilead. She has found a savior in the kind, old minister who has fallen in love with her. The courtship is the loveliest thing I have read in years. They come to value the comfort of the other standing by her shoulder. She has come to care for the kind old man and finds him beautiful. Their marriage is lyrical to me.

The ethical code in Robinson's books is a rather lovely one. The old minister says, "Any judgment of the kind is a great presumption. And presumption is a very grave sin." Lila come to believe that the search for meaning is like knowing a song. "In a song a note follows the one before because it is that song and not another one.".Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsAnd, at long last, the Spirit Descends - LILA
By Il'ja Rákoš on October 15, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
It takes no more than a sentence or two of Marilynne Robinson's most recent novel for the hard truth to set in that Lila - the eponymous heroine - will lead a life that is anything but ordinary. Born into a family in which the only viable alternative to abuse is neglect, the probability of Lila surviving childhood seems remote at best. And then, at the end of another day of horrifying routine after "the people inside fought themselves quiet", the child is snatched away by a woman known to her only as Doll. It is the middle of the night as Doll steals away from the porch asking no one who can answer "Where we gonna go?"

Set in the 1930s against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, "Lila" - novel and protagonist - is filled with the characters who display the resolve, desperation, and spirit that have come to mark that period in popular consciousness. But Marilynne Robinson is too intelligent, too aware, and too gifted to resort to a plot driven by hard luck cliché. Instead, she gives us Lila, the child becoming the woman, and her encounter with the world, viewing it through the prism of the migrant poor - those who, like her, were perhaps also unaware "that there were other names for seasons than planting and haying. Walk south ahead of the weather, walk north in time for the crops."

Destitute, hungry, and reconciled to the brutality and brevity of her existence, the girl trusts no one beyond Doll, expects nothing beyond crushing need. And it is here, when that need grows most desperate, that Marilynne Robinson's sublime literary creation - the homely township of Gilead - reappears to see us through the story of Lila.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsOne Star

Poorly written and difficult to follow.

Published 2 hours ago by Ann Gavin
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

I loved the ending of this book...
uplifting.

Published 3 hours ago by Marilyn Foote
4.0 out of 5 starsWell writen novel with great insight for how the marginalized live and...

Well writen novel with great insight for how the marginalized live and think. It is a great venue to grow in compassion.

Published 19 hours ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

An OK read.

Published 5 days ago by Marilyn Bate
5.0 out of 5 starsBook review

Another great read from Robinson

Published 8 days ago by Linda
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Good read

Published 12 days ago by Lon Dugger
5.0 out of 5 starsA Masterful Piece of Work

The latest novel in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series is at least as good as it predecessors. The prose is spare, never flowery, but evocative and vivid. Read more

Published 12 days ago by Nancy Gaston
5.0 out of 5 starsa simple story with deep meanings

This a story that at first sight seems to be slimple. However, it beautifully deals with deep issues of loneliness, faith, the life during the Depression times, negletfullness, and... Read more

Published 13 days ago by ana ovejero
4.0 out of 5 starsI know I'll give it a 5 when I read it again.

Lila is a winding, descriptive, philosophical novel. I have not read the other books in the series but I suppose they might have been different without such a main character. Read more

Published 18 days ago by Kelly
3.0 out of 5 starsHowever the sweet romance with the rreverend was lovely but its...

The book jumped back and forth and infound anlittle hard to follow. However the sweet romance with the rreverend was lovely but its uncertainty around lila was difficult

Published 21 days ago by Amazon Customer

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