Sunday, February 15, 2015

finishing Lila




I read half of this about a month ago and had it out as long as I could. 
Three weeks. 
I just got it back and finished reading it today. Marilynne Robinson
wrote it with no chapters. I think she is brave. I love her for writing
one long prose piece and editors letting her do it. 
I do think I need to reread it in one long sitting over days. 
Here were my favorite quotes near the end: 

A letter makes ordinary things seem important.” 

" The wind would be clapping shut, and prying open everything that was meant
to keep it out, bothering where it could, tied of it's huge loneliness. Had she ever
seen a windmill that hadn't lost half itself to the wind, like a blown milkweed?"
( reminds me of last night's howling wind)

" Calvin says every one of us has thousands of angels tending to us."

" His preaching was a sort of pattern of his mind, like the lines on his face."

"Eternity had more of every kind of room in it than this world did."


Review from the NY Times here

National Book Award Finalist here

Washington Post here : 

Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Lila:’ an exquisite novel of spiritual redemption and love


Iowa … All three books link life in Gilead to the history of what Robinson calls 'the Middle West'.

Iowa … All three books link life in Gilead to the history of what Robinson calls ‘the Middle West’. Photograph: Kevin Schmidt/Kevin Schmidt/ZUMA Press/Corbis

3 comments:

podso said...

Someday I will read this. Loved Gilead.

GretchenJoanna said...

I read a very provocative review in the New Yorker - that is, it provoked me to read a lot about Robinson and her books and to want to read at least *something* she wrote. I can't decide which book to start with....

Bonnie said...

You could start with Housekeeping or Gilead. I started with Gilead, although it is not the right order. But it is still the best of her writing.