Overview of Lola Quincey

English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 6.4.1

Lola Quincey in Atonement

Lola, at 15-years-old, is the eldest of the Quincey children.

Lola and her younger twin brothers, Jackson and Pierrot, have been temporarily put in the care of their aunt, Emily Tallis, and their cousins, while their parents go through a rather public and scandalous divorce.
Lola is an enigmatic character in the novel. We are never entirely sure to what extent she is a victim or a villain. This in turn affects the reader’s response to her.

Lola's difficult family circumstances creates sympathy.
Paul Marshall lets slip that he has read about her parents’ divorce in the press, suggesting it is a source of national gossip. The subject clearly upsets her, seen with how she reprimands Marshall (p59) and the fury with which she reacts to Jackson’s use of the forbidden word, “divorce” (p57). Lola has no-one to relate to or confide in: her parents are absent; Cecilia is too old; Briony and the twins too young.

Emily Tallis has little time for her young niece, seeing her as “the incarnation” (p65) of her sister (and Lola’s mother), Hermione.
However, considering Emily’s distance from her family and her misjudging the character of Paul Marshall, we should perhaps not take her opinion too seriously.

Like Briony, Lola is caught between childhood and adulthood.
She mimics the part of the protective parent when she reprimands Marshall for mentioning her parents’ divorce (“Then I’ll thank you not to talk about them in front of the children” p59) and then later tries to impress him with her sophistication in telling him of her going to the London Palladium to see Hamlet.

However, Lola's innocent mention of how she spilled a “strawberry drink” on her “frock” reminds us that she is not yet an adult.