lila. marilynne robinson. (264)

i picked up lila because it was on everyone's best of 2014 list and it won national book critics circle award as i was reading it, yet it didn't speak to me like it did to everyone else. it took me three weeks to read this book and it's only 261 pages.  i honestly thought i would quickly read it so i could get started on another book but i couldn't get into the story.

lila was the story of lila, who as a child was kidnapped (though her family was not doing a good job of caring of caring for her) by a woman, doll who cared for her.  she ended up in the town of gilead, which is the subject of other books by robinson) and married a minister, who was very much her senior.  it is then through flashbacks that we learn of lila's life, her time with doll, her suffering during the dust bowl era, her time in a whorehouse, and doll's arrest and disappearance.  lila had a rough life and as a result is bitter and lonely.  her relationship with the minister helped her grow as person and to learn to love.  it also allowed a raising of insightful theological questions like why does god allow people to suffer? the minister answered but nothing to truly satisfy lila or the reader, the usual trust in god's plan for us.  it was an interesting story but was slow in its development, it's only 261 pages but the first half is all lila

not ready to be honest with the minister. this slowness caused me to become bored with the book, which made it easy to put down.

and there is no denying that lila was beautiful written but i also had an issue with the sequence of the story, i constantly had to go back and forth to figure out if the present or the past was being referenced. and i never understand half of the things that were suppose to be inferred because descriptions were so vague. for example, the child's birth at the end, there were complications but it read as though the child had died though he didn't, so i was confused as to what had happen during child birth but it was never explained.  this vagueness plagued the book as well, but primarily due to lila not being very certain of anything that happen in her life, which is sad now that i think about.

lila was not for me, i think i will revisit it when i am a little bit longer in the tooth, but as of right now it, i didn't enjoy it.