Housekeeping is the first novel from Marilynne Robinson and it’s quite a startling book in some ways. It’s short, right over two-hundred pages, but apparently Robinson was able to come to terms with whatever it was that drove her to write this book because her second novel wouldn’t arrive until 2004, almost twenty-five years later. It doesn’t particularly have much in the way of plot. The book is narrated from the perspective of Ruthie who is a young girl when she’s left parentless. She and her sister Lucille are cared for by a variety of relatives, all of whom come vibrantly to life, until eventually they come to rest under the care of their aunt Sylvie, a transient with some, shall we say, undiagnosed mental issues. This is a kind of standard set-up, but Robinson’s prose is genuinely breathtaking in its beauty. This is a book I read really slowly because I just loved Robinson’s voice so much; it’s poetic, lyrical and gorgeous. All of the characters feel very real, even as the prose is heightened. Sylvie in particular is a wonderful character; Robinson doesn’t sugar-coat her, but she also lets us see the ways in which she’s a force of love, a force for good, in the lives of Ruthie and Lucille, even if she’s often far too chaotic a force. This is a really stunning little novel and, if Robinson hadn’t ever come back to fiction, this slim volume would have assured her place in American letters all by itself. It’s a work of real genius. 4 stars.
tl;dr – slim debut novel is filled with vibrant characters and told in a lyrical, breathtakingly gorgeous style; a book to be read slowly and savored. 4 stars.