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 mind that this is the very best book I will read in 2010.

From her descriptions of eaves bowing and changing seasons, inventive children and cloying adults, Housekeeping captures the textures and sounds and ghosts of childhood that recede into vague sentimentality. Or become deep, integral parts of us. “What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?”

Housekeeping is about the impermanence of all things, especially beauty & happiness, which face the deep undertow of transience.

One of my favorite passages:

“She seemed to dislike the disequilibrium of counterposing a roomful of light against a worldful of darkness. Sylvie in a house was more or less like a mermaid in a ship’s cabin. She preferred it sunk in the very element it was meant to exclude. We had crickets in the pantry, squirrels in the eaves, sparrows in the attic. Lucille and I stepped through the door from sheer night to sheer night.”

“Lucille would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones."