From the Bookshelf of Reading List Completists…

Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

Start date: November 1, 2016

Finish date: November 30, 2016

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: Winner of the November 2016 One Word Title Poll
[close] Winner of the November 2016 One Word Title Poll

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What Members Thought

Jan 23, 2017 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-20th-c, fiction, american-21st-c, pulitzer-fiction, novels

Marilynne Robinson's first novel Housekeeping were it a piece of music, would ressemble Sibelius' Violin Sonata in D Minor - slow and foreboding, full of winter's solitude and loneliness. The setting, Fingerbone (most likely in Idaho) is quite reminiscent of Finland actually. There is the small town surrounded by snow-covered mountains with a huge lake not far from which live Ruthie, the narrator and her sister Lucille. They have been surrounded by death and loss: their grandfather died during a ...more

193 likes · Like · see review

Nov 07, 2016 Matthew rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, completist-book-club, library, kindle

Interesting story - poetic feel to the writing. Enjoyed it, but it was not enthralling. Best way to put it - I wanted to finish it to see what happened, but I was not excited to come back to it.

One key characteristic was that it was odd enough that I would have a hard time figuring out exactly what was happening. When I finally did, a new chapter would start, and it would get odd again.

31 likes · Like · see review

Aug 08, 2012 Mmars rated it it was amazing

With a title like “Housekeeping” and a story billed to be about the generations of women who raised two orphaned girls, the assumption would be that the story would focus on the “keeping” of the house, and that the “house” would thereby be kept in good order.

Well, it begins that way. And, what housekeeping is to one person may be something entirely different to another, which leads me to what I think this book was really about.

Our bodies house our souls. The story is a metaphor. The manmade, f ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Sep 26, 2017 Sue K H rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

It's amazing that this was a first book. It's beautifully poetic and atmospheric. The story is a sad one about the coming of age of two sisters who've dealt with great loss and abandonment and ultimately deal with it in different ways. The story is told with captivating evocative imagery. The cover of this book is one of the best I've ever seen at capturing the mood and feel of the story. I may have to buy it now. There were slow spots for me but, it's not very long so the slow spots were short ...more

4 likes · Like · see review