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Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson

3.83 · rating details · 10,138 ratings · 1,645 reviews

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their gr...more

Paperback, 219 pages

Published November 1st 2004 by Picador (first published 1980)

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Best Books of the Decade: 1980's

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Oct 07, 2007

laura rated it

Shelves: fiction, beautiful, strange, hushed, favorites

written in exquisite detail, as everyone has noted, but a lot of the rest of what's been written in the more recent reviews i find sort of troubling and, frankly, misleading. recommended for 'women who like descriptive writing'? gross. this novel was given to me by a dude, and further recommended by a (male) writer i know as one of the best novels of the 20th century (from a guy who counts ernest hemingway as a favorite author). this is not, as has been implied, some kind of lady-book-- a bauble...morewritten in exquisite detail, as everyone has noted, but a lot of the rest of what's been written in the more recent reviews i find sort of troubling and, frankly, misleading. recommended for 'women who like descriptive writing'? gross. this novel was given to me by a dude, and further recommended by a (male) writer i know as one of the best novels of the 20th century (from a guy who counts ernest hemingway as a favorite author). this is not, as has been implied, some kind of lady-book-- a bauble for sighing and sensitive females.

marilynne robinson's 'housekeeping' is a revelation-- of lonliness in particular, and of transience (two subjects, by the by, that people tend quite stupidly to associate more with male psyches and literary tastes). it resonates less, in my opinion, as a girl-comes-of-age story or as a tale of sisterly bonds than it does as just the story of a person trying to make it in a family trying to make it in a town trying to make it in this world. about the survival strategies of each. about how things just keep going, keep trying to make it (or stop trying, and why).

albert camus wrote that "there is but one serious philosophical problem and that is suicide"--the problem of why we should and shouldn't go on living. robinson, of course, is a novelist, not a philosopher, and she's not so much in the business of showing us why we should or shouldn't go on, but of how (and sometimes why) we do or don't. 'housekeeping' is nothing less than a narrative account of this most profound and universally relevant fact: the fact that we keep going, or that we don't, and how we do or don't (and sometimes why).

***

"there was not a soul there but knew how shallow-rooted the whole town was. it flooded yearly, and had burned once. often enough the lumber mill shut down, or burned down. there were reports that things were otherwise elsewhere, and anyone, on a melancholy evening, might feel that fingerbone was a meager and difficult place.

"so a diaspora threatened always. and there is no living creature, though the whims of eons had put its eyes on boggling stalks and clampled it in a carapace, dimished it to a pinpoint and given it a taste for mud and stuck it down a well or hid it under a stone, but that creature will live on if it can. so fingerbone, which despite all its difficultes sometimes seemed pleasant and ordinary, would value itelf, too, and live on if and as it could. so every wanderer whose presence suggested it might be as well to drift, or it could not matter much, was met with something that seemed at first sight a moral reaction, since morality is a check upon the strongest temptations."

marilynne robinson
'housekeeping'(less)

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Nov 03, 2009

Bram rated it

Shelves: 2009

I might as well cut to the chase here: this book was a pretty significant and unexpected disappointment for me. Housekeeping falls into one of my favorite literary sub-genres: mostly plotless, character-driven novels (e.g. To the Lighthouse, In Search of Lost Time). I'd seen the Pen/Faulkner Award, the "best of" status among recent American books voted on by “writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/fiction...), and the high ratings from f...moreI might as well cut to the chase here: this book was a pretty significant and unexpected disappointment for me. Housekeeping falls into one of my favorite literary sub-genres: mostly plotless, character-driven novels (e.g. To the Lighthouse, In Search of Lost Time). I'd seen the Pen/Faulkner Award, the "best of" status among recent American books voted on by “writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/fiction...), and the high ratings from friends with impeccable taste. But while reading, my emotions were never really aroused, and I feel that Robinson’s flirtations with profundity remain just that, occasionally failing to ring true at all.

My requirements for this sub-genre are few but demanding. I'll go ahead and split them into three groups, although all three bleed together: 1) I need to feel something at some point; 2) the prose should be exceptional in some way, which for me is actually very much tied into #1); 3) my understanding of humanity and myself should be expanded through contact with the characters and their minds.

This book failed me to some degree on each of these points, which is not to say that I think this book isn't good or wouldn't fulfill all of these requirements and more for another reader. Regarding point 1, I felt strangely empty and uninvolved throughout, despite reading this under ideal conditions—long, unbroken stretches. It’s very difficult for me to analyze this lack of response, but I think it’s primarily tied to the prose and the characterization. I should be clear about this: the writing is good, even very good. Perhaps I’ve become spoiled or overly-influenced by Modernist stylists (Woolf!), but the prose is often plain, occasionally beautiful, and sometimes clunky in its strivings for transcendence. In the end, Robinson’s nondescript approach--and this is a very relative claim--didn’t capture my imagination.

Perhaps my greatest disappointment with the book, and this was a BIG surprise, was with the characterization. Robinson gathers everyone into two main groups, the conformists and the nonconformists, with whom we are meant to identify via Ruthie's narration. With the possible exception of Ruthie and Lucille’s grandmother, each character fits neatly into these two types. Can anyone who’s read the book tell me what the difference is, really, between Ruthie, Sylvie, and Helen? They each fall into a very specific outsider-by-nature category: drifters or transients with a strong connection to the past, a weak connection to the present, and a malaise that somehow seems a little too pleasant considering the ever-present specter of suicide. I felt as if I couldn't quite follow this specific idea of non-conformity, that it didn't feel true/real, and that I couldn't really access or understand their lives, their desires, their concerns. We're gently directed to see Lucille as intolerant, as misled in her desire for a normal life and for friends. After stepping outside the fantasy of dreamy living contained within the book, however, I find her desires entirely reasonable and I think her concerns with her living situation are probably more than reasonable.

Now, one aspect of reviewing that's always annoyed me is when people complain about disliking characters or being unable to relate to them as a reason for disliking a book, when often the book is crafted to elicit such responses. Perhaps in the past I’ve been too judgmental in this respect. Or maybe the important thing is simply that the characters cause you to feel some emotion, any at all, and that you can feel these people to be real, multidimensional beings. I didn’t get that from Housekeeping. I couldn’t feel the pain that Ruthie may have been experiencing because I was never sure what she was feeling, no matter how grave the situation. The fallout from bad events and neutral events felt more or less the same; Sylvie and Ruthie’s instincts felt foreign, removed, and with Sylvie in particular, borderline insane: the ‘imaginary kids’ storyline was a particularly forced attempt at profundity that struck me as silly and unrelatable. And my chief annoyance with Robinson is that she seemed bent on pushing me toward one limited character type and away from another when, if I'm forced to live in this dichotomous world she’s created, I'd almost certainly choose the other path—the one of Lucille, the one that would lead me out of Fingerbone to the promise of Boston rather than to greasy diners, truck stops, and train cars. Robinson doesn’t exactly romanticize the latter type of living, but it's still portrayed as the preferable way of leaving a trapped existence.

When I say that I have limited access to these characters and this world, and that it ultimately felt untrue, here’s what I mean (this is Ruthie in the final pages of the book): I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much different if I could ever say, This I have learned from my senses, while that I have merely imagined. Really? It’s character revelations and discoveries like this that pepper the book, and for each one that I could say ‘Yes, I get this, I’m with you,’ there were two or three like that quote above where I just couldn’t grasp the experience or couldn’t relate to the introspection. For me, that ring of truthiness was missing.

It’s tempting to view this story broadly and crudely. We see the decay that occurs when one stays in the same place—the same small, sleepy, petty town. Ruthie must, at some point, become active and move on toward something different or face troubling consequences. Yet a similar impetus drives Lucille, the conformist. What are we to make of this? Is the point that different personalities have different paths, and these shouldn't be limited or overly-determined by society? Why is Lucille placed in a negative light when the choice that faces both sisters--whether to stick with family, the past, decay--presents so many difficulties? Perhaps I expected the wrong things from this book, and I would’ve been better off by just letting it float by without over-considering some of these themes and meanings. And yet, awards and reputation aside, Housekeeping often does ‘ask’ to be taken seriously within the text itself. I’m missing something.(less)

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Oct 10, 2008

RandomAnthony rated it

Two things you should know about my thoughts on Housekeeping:

1) I think Housekeeping is a great book.
2) Finishing Housekeeping gave me a palpable sense of relief.

Housekeeping is darker and more intense than the author’s better-known Gilead . The former is also a tougher read; even the most careful reader would, I imagine, find herself returning to some passages a few times in an attempt to follow the beautiful but difficult language. So while I don’t regret...more

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Nov 14, 2011

KFed rated it

Shelves: read-multiple-times

Another reviewer labeled this book as good for "Women who love descriptive writing." Well. I loved this book, so either I'm due for an identity crisis or someone here is a little misguided about writing and gender. Or both.

Either way, I can't say enough about this luminous, challenging and sobering book.

Robinson starts her novel with a cross-generational tale of loss. The narrator, Ruthie, recounts the story of the death of her grandfather, who went down with a...more

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Oct 20, 2011

Mark rated it

Shelves: fiction

Marilynne Robinson won great praise a couple years ago for "Gilead," and much was made of the fact that it had been 23 years since she had written her first novel, "Housekeeping." While this was an evocative tale about a family in an isolated rural area and the writing was often poetic, I found it a struggle to get through. Heavy on atmospherics and light on plot, it was the kind of book where I often found myself nodding off on mid-page. Not my cup of tea.

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Jul 13, 2008

Nick rated it

I'm going to throw the gauntlet down and say that I thought this book was terribly overrated considering how many of my friends--whose taste I've come to respect--recommended it to me. All the critics from 1980 seemed amazed that this was a debut. Seemed like a first novel to me.

The thing that people praise most about the book was the beauty of her language. I'll admit that there were some wonderful passages, and some great imagery, but there was just as much "writerly" pro...moreI'm going to throw the gauntlet down and say that I thought this book was terribly overrated considering how many of my friends--whose taste I've come to respect--recommended it to me. All the critics from 1980 seemed amazed that this was a debut. Seemed like a first novel to me.

The thing that people praise most about the book was the beauty of her language. I'll admit that there were some wonderful passages, and some great imagery, but there was just as much "writerly" prose, overwritten prose, pyrite prose. I felt like I was possessed by the spirit George Orwell as again and again I read poor word choices: "achromatic" for "colorless;" "simulacra" for "semblance." These words are not poetic substitutes but verge on jargon. Blandishment? Come on. That's about as poetic as "esophagus."

I also thought the philosophical meanderings of Ruthie bordered on pretentiousness: "So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory--there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine." Whenever it appeared, this vague, didactic prose seemed to stifle what little story there was. And let's not forget that these ideas could never have come from the mind of Ruthie, teen aged or aged. One who spends her days trying desperately to be ignored and can barely speak does not later become a meditator on memory and the Garden of Eden.

I probably would have been more forgiving of the novel in these aspects if I thought there was a strong story. There is not. Rather, Robinson decided that a gauzy, limp tale of loss would preclude the need for any kind sustained dramatic tension. We are treated to uninspiring characters with no real redeeming qualities. The only dynamo in the story is Lucille and because of her conforming attitude, we are distanced from identifying with her. Instead, we get to hang out with Ruthie, the world's most inactive protagonist.

Now, I will qualify everything. I will say that I did enjoy chapters 4-8. I actually enjoyed them a lot. The conflict between the two sisters was wonderful. But a good middle does not make a good book. The first two chapters were all but unnecessary--drawn out exposition that could easily have been woven into the rest of the book--and the ending just fell flat. What was Robinson trying to say? That grief makes you drift? That the power of memory can drag you towards oblivion? I think my frustration stems partly from dashed hopes that the ending would unite and triumph. Instead, I was left with a handful of images, nothing more. (less)

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Jul 28, 2007

Bart rated it

Recommends it for: Women who love descriptive writing

Investor Warren Buffett has said, "That which is not worth doing is not worth doing well."

So then, are those characters which are not worth writing about worth writing about brilliantly?

That was the question this book left me asking. Essentially, this book can be reduced to the coming-of-age of two sisters and an eccentric aunt. The author deserves little credit for character development because her two main characters, to whom she subjects an odd and tragic c...more

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Sep 01, 2007

Katherine rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: booksthatmakemylifebetter

Really, this is a rare book that "made my life better". I think Marilynne Robinson is amazing because she has written two novels in the past twenty years (that have been published) and both have been amazing. This is story of 2 girls who struggle to live with various members of their family after their depressed mother leaves them.

It's hard to put into words the depth of emotion that comes out of Robinson's beautiful prose, and to fully comprehend everything that is going...more

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Dec 27, 2008

Matthew rated it

Housekeeping has a distancing voice--brittle, isolationist and isolating--and the book is steeped in both death and its premonition, life seen as an unforgiving and unforgiveable thing tolerable only in ritualization or complete letting go.

Somehow, though, it remains also one of most humane and often even humorous books I know, still gentle in its ironies, humane and sympathetic in its treatment of the women and girls who make up the whole of the book, all of them suicides or suicide...more

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Aug 17, 2008

Karlan rated it

Two sisters raised in a small western town by their grandmother, then 2 great aunts, then an aunt who is a drifter survive being orphans in different surprising ways. The author of GILEAD created an unusual family and made me care about them. It is a compelling novel which is hard to put down.

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Aug 01, 2008

Jody Rambo rated it

just reread. extraordinary. never have i felt i had entered a narrator's subconscious so fully. loss. abandonment. transience. lake fingerbone is an elemental world i think of when i wish to escape, vanish, become cultureless.

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Aug 23, 2008

Sarah rated it

About a girl who really hates to talk and never talks but the author can't stop babbling. She just goes on and on and on and on and on.

The ending really sucks, just like the middle and the beginning.

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Jan 25, 2011

Josh Ang rated it

This is a quiet novel, subtle and precise in its depiction of the plight of a pair of orphaned sisters.

Helen abandons her daughters Ruth and Lucille at the doorstep of her estranged mother before she drives into her watery grave at Fingerbone Lake.

Ruth takes on the role of the narrator and it is through her eyes that we see the social relationships within the house as she and her sister are passed on from the care of their grandmother, to two anxious grandaunts, and then to Helen's sister, Sy...more

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Jan 01, 2012

Cailin Deery rated it

Recommended to Cailin by: alex

Shelves: favorites

When I was a little girl, I always thought I'd be wonderful at relating to children as an adult, because I couldn't imagine changing so much that I wouldn't understand myself (as I then knew myself) and other children. Robinson has done what I really failed to do. She perfectly articulates the senses, perceptions and mythology of childhood and I found myself rereading passages again and again, then physically cherishing the book, clasping it and making “small mouth.” There is no question in my ...more

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Mar 28, 2009

May rated it

Shelves: fiction

This is the author of "Gilhead." Exquisite if you don't mind slowing down enough to appreciate her writing. For instance: "Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my bowels and bones. Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's workings" (p. 116). This passage offers a method to help us read her book: like the prota...more

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Feb 17, 2011

Antof9 rated it

Shelves: 2005-read, americana, bookcrossed-read, depressing, made-me-cry, made-me-think, upsetting, women

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Not sure where to start on my review for this book. First, because it was in the back of my head every time I picked it up, click here for the imdb.com link to the 1987 movie. I've never heard of it, but I really like Christine Lahti. In addition, a lot of the reviews are very complimentary. Maybe I'll watch it. . .

I was surprised by what a downer this book was. I found it intensely depressing. In fact, I would have finished it sooner, but many days I just couldn't pick it up a...moreNot sure where to start on my review for this book. First, because it was in the back of my head every time I picked it up, click here for the imdb.com link to the 1987 movie. I've never heard of it, but I really like Christine Lahti. In addition, a lot of the reviews are very complimentary. Maybe I'll watch it. . .

I was surprised by what a downer this book was. I found it intensely depressing. In fact, I would have finished it sooner, but many days I just couldn't pick it up as it made me so sad.

The writing is very very good. I'm always surprised when a book is really well written but I don't necessarily like it! Kind of catches me off guard. Someone said earlier that the writing is truly poetic, and that is so true. The way she wrote about the reflection of a woman in a mirror and one in water, how it breaks up and re-creates itself was just beautiful.

I have always said I'm shallow (extroverted ENFP, you know), so I often miss things until they're spelled out (or I'm in a discussion in class -- that often helps). I have to say I didn't get the title at all until very near the end: Sylvie only kept them, I think, because she considered accumulation to be the essence of housekeeping. . . Ahhhh . . . and duhhhh . . . I thought this a fascinating commentary on a transient. I wondered if I didn't get it because the expression "set up housekeeping" (usually applied to newlyweds) just isn't that common anymore and I didn't make the connection. Who knows?

I was impressed by all the literary and Biblical allusions in this book. The Cane and Abel one near the end was especially intense.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

I'll probably still be thinking about this book for years to come. The concept of one's opinion of a parent who dies (or anyone, for that matter) being affected by their absence is fascinating. Ruthie's comments on how she would view her mother if her mother had continued living -- that the girls would want her to change her hair, or wouldn't always visit at Christmas, etc. -- but instead her mother's memory became bigger by her death bowled me over. I'm often saddened by what I've missed out on in the future by having lost my dad in 1998, and it's easy to build that up into something that might not have been had he really been alive. Of course, that knowledge doesn't make me miss him any less.

This is one heavy book. I'm trying to find some hope in it, and am not sure I can. Perhaps that is why it made me so sad. I guess I am glad that Ruthie had Sylvie, and Lucille found happiness (or some semblance thereof) where she wanted it, but still -- this is one sad book.

The reality is that this kind of thing really happens in our world, and reading something like this -- albeit sad, makes me more aware. It makes me grateful, too, for what I have. And that reminder is very valuable.(less)

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Feb 07, 2008

Kristen added it · review of another edition

This novel touched me deeply... This first novel by Marilynne Robinson is so incredible and the language is so beautiful that I would read passages over and over again just to savor the words. The novel speaks to the heart and soul about the transitory state that our lives exemplify, while touching on our expectations and their consequences on our experiences of life.

Not only is it a story about transiency but of sisters. This is the story of two sisters, Ruthie and Lucille. The ...more

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Jan 09, 2008

Tung rated it

I enjoyed Gilead so much, I picked up Robinson’s first novel. The book is another first-person narrative, but this time from the perspective of a young woman named Ruth. Ruth and her younger sister Lucille were raised by their grandmother after their mother committed suicide, and then by their eccentric aunt Sylvie after their grandmother passes away. By eccentric, I mean Sylvie’s way out there. She spends her time wandering around, speaking to strange characters at bus stations, sitting in th...more

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Jan 02, 2008

Lucy rated it

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, which is a very popular book among readers this season, and just to be that much different (I know... I'm such a stand-out), I read her previous novel, which came as highly recommended.

I can see why book lovers like her. She vividly details each scene. Suddenly, a page is full of the texture of the bedspread and the lighting in the room and the placement of the shoes on a certain side of the bed. But said with such description that you imag...more

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Sep 09, 2007

Meagan rated it

I have 25 pages left of this book, and so I will refrain from granting stars for now. But I felt the need to stop and take a breath before I stay up too late tonight to finish it. This is perhaps the most acute and beautiful portrait of life's fragility and sometimes cruel, sometimes indifferent contingencies that I have ever read. Being with Ruthie, the narrator, for too long makes me begin to feel as if my confidence that everything and everyone I love dearly will still be there in the morning...moreI have 25 pages left of this book, and so I will refrain from granting stars for now. But I felt the need to stop and take a breath before I stay up too late tonight to finish it. This is perhaps the most acute and beautiful portrait of life's fragility and sometimes cruel, sometimes indifferent contingencies that I have ever read. Being with Ruthie, the narrator, for too long makes me begin to feel as if my confidence that everything and everyone I love dearly will still be there in the morning is absurd, and asking to be shattered. As you can imagine, reading this book is uncomfortable. To say the least.

Ruthie's grandfather died when a train fell off a bridge into a cold, deep lake. Her mother dropped her and her sister off at their grandmother's house one morning to drive a borrowed car into the same lake. Her grandmother died a few years later. And now she lives with a mysterious drifter of an aunt who seems tempted to succumb to the lake - or a passing freight train- at any odd quiet moment.

Every page of Ruthie's narration is infused with longing and wonder at all that has been lost. She feels the pain of absence (and a long absence's tricks on memory) with such ferocity that the dead are almost with her. This is the passage about how Ruthie's grief and longing for her mother has evolved that made me gasp and then cry just a few pages ago:

It was so very long since the dark had swum her hair, and there was nothing more to dream of but often she almost slipped through any door I saw from the side of my eye, and it was she, and not changed, and not perished. She was a music I no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished.

Or this, an observation somehow drawn from Ruthie's encounter with a crumbling lonely house in the woods:

And here again is a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.

Is this the only hope that Ruthie can squeeze from her bleak and transient world? Is the only respite from longing the proximity it gives us to the thing that is lost? There is such pain, and so little comfort. Certainly as a reader one cannot avoid yearning for her own losses, and touching Ruthie's cold hand in doing so. I feel privileged to witness Ruthie's childhood. But I cannot fully buy into this joyless, humorless world - though the prose is perfect, and honest - I do think that great losses cannot completely barricade out life's pleasures and jokes, sensory brilliance and small generosities.

But I'm not finished yet - perhaps some colors other than gray and white will shine forth before I fall asleep tonight.(less)

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Feb 04, 2008

Sara rated it

Shelves: fiction

There is excellent writing. And then there is excellent plotting and storytelling. And if you are very lucky, you will get all of these elements in a single book. This is not that book!

That said, it is a very beautiful read. Robinson clearly takes delight in writing for the sake of writing, and her sentences are thoughtful and extensive and remind me a bit of watching a droplet of water make its way down a pane of glass - it twists and turns and is unpredictable in its path. So I giv...more

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Jul 07, 2007

Amanda rated it

Shelves: read_summer_07

You thought I was going to rant about housekeeping, the activity, not the book.

This is a reflection on the book, not of the activity. Though, Thursday we are cleaning house and I might have some more OCD tips for you.

Time Magazine named Housekeeping one of the 100 All Time Novels.

I wouldn't go so far.

Please don't misunderstand me, it's a quite lovely novel about two sisters coming of age and negotiating their roles in society--what is proper and wh...more

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Dec 17, 2008

Sara rated it

Shelves: sweet-on-them

Housekeeping is not a book for everyone. If the term "writer's writer" turns you off, it might not be for you. And Marilynne Robinson is certainly that. A less fastidious reader than I could probably finish this in an afternoon but that would be a mistake. There's little plot to speak of, aside from a depiction of the ebb and flow of a life. There's a flood, an ice storm, some trains, families that splinter and realign, children that grow older by increments and bounds, all in a settin...more

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Jan 25, 2009

Christy rated it

I had no idea what was being withheld from me by not reading Marilynne Robinson - this is a lovely, haunting, water-and-earth-filled book. Robinson's prose is lucid and at the same time as distracted and lilting and absorbed as her characters are. I will go on to read Gilead, but I think that it simply can't be this perfect. And since "Housekeeping" is set in the Idaho/Washington backwaters, I am more easily able to believe the gloom and sense of weird weightlessness this story conveys...more

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Jan 06, 2009

Tracy rated it

Shelves: fiction, kindle, ebook

Marilynne Robinson's writing is just lyrical and I fell into the story and couldn't find my way out. A contemplation of family and bonds and loss, it's lovely and sweet and sad - and that with me not being able to relate to the characters. I prefer Gilead, but this was beautiful to read.

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Sep 24, 2008

Ed rated it

I bought "Housekeeping" a couple of years ago, after coming across it repeatedly in various authors' lists of favorite novels. For some reason, I never got into it until this week, after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. And of course, once I started I couldn't put it down. Its a book that I would not have expected to relate to very much, based on a summary of plot and characters. But in fact, its another of those where the writing is so exquisite that I was drawn in and could...more

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Jul 19, 2007

Jrobertus rated it

Shelves: reallygoodbooks

House-Keeping may be my favorite novel, but certainly in the top five. The writing is so elegant, polished, and very evocative. The story of a dysfunctional family very naturally raises GIANT issues for all people, about the role of family, about goals, meaning, and the nature of cosmos, in the classic Greek sense of a place in the world. She brings in archetypal symbols, like water for rebirth, in a naturalistic way that is truly amazing, or the best luck in literature. This book was made i...more

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Aug 25, 2008

Karima rated it

Recommended to Karima by: Cricket

This book was tough for me. The writing is BEAUTIFUL but the tone is MOROSE. Ir reads like a prose poem and is filled with sentences like,
"For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?"(p. 152)
See what I mean!? This is luscious stuff.
However, reading it brought me into another...more

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Mar 12, 2009

B rated it

Shelves: fiction

Housekeeping is about family and loss. It’s about growing up and finding your identity. And it's also about memory (“memory is the sense of loss”).
This is a difficult, dark, and very sad book. It tells the story of two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, who after losing both their parents, are cared for by their grandmother, their great aunts and then, their strange aunt, in a small town in Western America. They both long to have a family, to belong with someone, to feel part of something, but the...more

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Feb 02, 2009

Lauren rated it

For a story of two orphaned sisters raised to young adulthood by a mix of fickle female relatives in the town called Fingerbone, Robinson’s Housekeeping is what you might expect—ethereal, melancholy, and unrelenting—even still, it will shake you to the core. It is a great talent of Robinson’s that she can nearly sum up the entire novel in just the first three sentences of the book and still leave you a ravenous reader until long after you’ve set it down for the last time.
My name is Ruth. I...moreFor a story of two orphaned sisters raised to young adulthood by a mix of fickle female relatives in the town called Fingerbone, Robinson’s Housekeeping is what you might expect—ethereal, melancholy, and unrelenting—even still, it will shake you to the core. It is a great talent of Robinson’s that she can nearly sum up the entire novel in just the first three sentences of the book and still leave you a ravenous reader until long after you’ve set it down for the last time.
My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia Fisher. Through all these generations of elders we lived in one house, my grandmother’s house, built for her by her husband, Edmund Foster, an employee of the railroad, who escaped this world years before I entered it. (Page 1)
The generations of Ruth’s family have been stricken by tragedy and yet her narration recounts these events with a tone that conveys her understanding of death and beauty as equal forces in a lifetime. While Ruth’s language might foster the mundane, the eloquence and delicacy of Robinson’s writing is anything but.
In as much as Ruth, Lucille, and their transient Aunt Sylvia take upon them the errors of the family members that came before, Fingerbone is not just a setting for the events of their lives, but rather a landscape embodying a greater history. Placed properly on the outskirts of nearly nowhere, nestled against a lake towered over by a train tressle, Robinson’s Fingerbone has a life force arguably equal to that of her characters.
The fragmented image of jonquil sky spilled from top to top of the rounding waves as the shine spills on silk, and gulls sailed up into the very height of the sky, still stark white when they could just be seen. To the east the mountains were eclipsed. To the west they stood in balmy light. (Page 149)
While I would never dare call this novel, which seems to spin unstopping around an axis of loss or rather lap and recede against decades of sadness, direct, the precision of Robinson’s writing and storytelling is incomparable. It would be your own tragedy to not pick it up and let it wash over you.
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About Marilynne Robinson

Her 1980 novel, Housekeeping, won a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Her second novel, Gilead, was acclaimed by critics and received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2005 Ambassador Book Award.

Her third novel, Home, was published in ...more

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Books by Marilynne Robinson

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Quotes from Housekeeping

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.” — 63 people liked it

“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.” — 53 people liked it

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