there were reports that things were otherwise elsewhere, and anyone, on a melancholy evening, might feel that fingerbone was a meager and difficult place. often enough the lumber mill shut down, or burned down. 'there was not a soul there but knew how shallow-rooted the whole town was. '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). robinson, of course, is a novelist, not a philosopher, and she's not in the business of telling us why we should or shouldn't go on, but of showing us how (and sometimes why) we do or don't. about how things just keep going, keep trying to make it (or stop trying), and why.Īlbert 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. 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. it's a revelation of lonliness in particular, and of transience (two subjects often, if stupidly, associated with male psyches and literary tastes).

Marilynne robinson's 'housekeeping', like all great literature, is a revelation.

this is not, as has been implied, some kind of lady-book. this novel was given to me by a dude, and further recommended by a (male) writer i know- a guy who counts earnest hemingway among his favorite writers- as one of the best novels of the 20th century. recommended for 'women who like descriptive writing'? gross. 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.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson