50 pages • 1-hour read
We All Live Here
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Themes
Challenges and Rewards of Family Life
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
We All Live Here derives its primary conflict from Lila Kennedy’s domestic realm, a narrative choice that captures the positive and negative aspects of family life. Because the novel primarily focuses on Lila’s storyline, the author explores the challenges and rewards of parenthood through Lila’s perspective. In the wake of her divorce from Dan, Lila is trying to orient to running a household on her own. She has her stepfather Bill McKenzie’s help, but he’s still grieving Francesca’s death and is particular about how he spends his time. Lila’s estranged biological father, Gene, shows up on Lila’s doorstep and further disrupts her family sphere, complicating how she relates to Bill and her young daughters, Celie and Violet. Trying to manage these dynamics tests Lila’s sense of herself as a mother and a woman throughout the novel.
The evolution of Lila’s relationships with her daughters and fathers implies that family life is ultimately life-giving in spite of its many challenges. Throughout the majority of the novel, Lila feels overwhelmed and alone. She struggles to balance her familial relationships with her need for personal healing, alone time, and vocational validation. She is compelled to mediate Bill and Gene’s conflicts and combat her daughters’ moods and emotions, all while trying to write a new book and start dating again. While these dynamics threaten to undue Lila’s peace of mind, once she begins to speak up for herself, she discovers that family life can be fortifying.
Over the course of the novel, the author incorporates an increasing number of scenes of Lila enjoying time with her family to cumulatively represent positive familial dynamics. One example appears in Chapter 24 when Lila, Bill, Gene, Celie, Violet, Penelope, and Jensen come together to celebrate Gene’s newest commercial. Watching the ad and eating dinner together “is a scene of life and warmth and color, and Lila feels oddly emotional at the sight of it, as if it is only now that she can allow herself to acknowledge how far they have all come” (265). This imagery—in tandem with the surrounding images of Lila and her family taking walks, sharing meals, and attending plays—captures how even amid family conflict, there is happiness and solidarity. By the novel’s end, Lila and her family learn to both share the same space and give each other room to grow as individuals. While Bill moves out and starts a relationship with Penelope, Gene moves back in, and Lila, Celie, and Violet work out their differences with Dan and his new family.
Healing, Reconciliation, and Personal Growth
Lila’s post-divorce life instigates her journey toward healing, reconciliation, and personal growth. In the wake of Dan’s affair and departure, Lila feels as if she is “vainly bobbing” in a “slightly leaky and unstable” rowboat, “as if [she has] abruptly and without warning found [herself] adrift on the high seas” (7). This metaphor captures the tenuous nature of Lila’s personal, domestic, and family life. She’s not only trying to make sense of life without Dan but also facing difficult questions about herself as a woman and a mother. She’s still grieving “the sudden death of Francesca” while also trying to work out the trajectory of her writing career (6). Life’s conflicts threaten to weigh her down because they compel her to interrogate who she has been, who she is in the present, and who she wants to become.
Lila changes over the course of the novel as a result of her experiences and relationships. Her friendship with Eleanor particularly offers Lila stability and encouragement. Although Lila often fears confiding in Eleanor because she feels ashamed of her actions or feelings, Eleanor acts as her guide. She doesn’t simply validate Lila’s emotions but consistently challenges her to be and do better—by her family and by herself. After each of their visits, Lila is compelled into deep reflection, which in turn ushers her toward change. Eleanor specifically offers Lila perspective on her dating life, her frustrations with her fathers, and her manuscript project.
Lila’s evolving dynamics with Anoushka, Bill, Gene, Dan, Gabriel, Jensen, and her daughters similarly inspire her to reflect on her behaviors and embrace a new and better iteration of herself. With Anoushka, she learns to be honest and open, claiming her capabilities and owning her challenges. With Bill and Gene, she learns how to forgive and let go of the past. She forgives Bill for his particularities and shares in his joy when he starts seeing Penelope (even though she still misses her mother). With Gene, she learns to accept that he’s changed and honor his developing relationships with her daughters. With Dan, she learns to make room for his experience and family life amid her own while owning her culpability in their past relationship. With Gabriel, she learns to stand up for herself, and with Jensen she learns to embrace vulnerability and intimacy. All these interpersonal dynamics show that change comes about via authentic connection. Lila does begin to take charge of her own life (which shows her personal growth, too), but she also learns that it isn’t a sign of weakness to accept help from others. In reconciling her differences with others, she achieves a more peaceful way of being and begins to inhabit an identity she’s proud of.
Search for Love and Companionship
Lila’s concurrent relationships with Dan, Jensen, and Gabriel mobilize her ongoing search for love and companionship. Since she and Dan broke up, Lila has been unable to imagine dating again. With Dan, it “felt like she had everything” she wanted and everything “to look forward to” (24). His decisions to have an extramarital affair with Marja and leave Lila have thus unsteadied her sense of reality, self, and love in general. Her conversations with Eleanor about love, sex, and relationships convey how uneasy Lila feels about entertaining the idea of starting over. She tells Eleanor that she “would rather die” than try to attend sex parties and that she “can’t really imagine being with anyone but Dan” because they were together for so long (30). However, Eleanor’s consistent insistence that Lila rediscover her sexuality, combined with Anoushka’s insistence that Lila write about her single life, eventually inspires Lila to pursue new forms of intimacy and pleasure.
Dating Jensen and Gabriel compels Lila to question what she wants from a new relationship and what love actually means to her. With Dan, she thought she had a perfect marriage—she even wrote an entire book about their seemingly idyllic relationship. Without Dan, she realizes that love no longer means the same thing and that intimacy might require new things of her. With Jensen, forming a real connection means opening herself up to vulnerability and allowing someone to see her true self. Jensen isn’t her idea of a perfect match when they first meet, but over time, she begins to realize that Jensen is caring, intuitive, and empathetic. He also asks Lila to be more giving with her time and emotions and to respect his experience as much as her own. With Gabriel, Lila initially thinks that she’s found the perfect man. He has dreamy eyes and a charming demeanor. He also floods her with compliments when they’re together and commiserates about the woes of single parenthood. However, Gabriel is physically and emotionally distant, which causes Lila to question herself. This relationship makes her realize that she needs more attention and care than someone like Gabriel can give her. These contrasting experiences suggest that dating is a part of the journey toward finding and shaping lasting connections.
By the novel’s end, Lila finds love and companionship with Jensen—a relationship that proves to be reciprocal, exciting, and reliable. Jensen not only shows his love in demonstrative ways—caring for her girls, fixing her car, giving her rides, and encouraging her—but also forgives Lila for writing about him in her manuscript. His character teaches Lila that although she’s been heartbroken in the past, new forms of intimacy are still possible. She finds this with Jensen.
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