Housekeeping A Novel
“Housekeeping A Novel” by Marilynne Robinson, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 4, 2020, is a reprint edition comprising 224 pages. This modern classic tells the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, as they navigate their unconventional upbringing in the small town of Fingerbone. Their lives shift from the care of their competent grandmother to the chaotic influence of two great-aunts, and finally to Sylvie, their mother’s eccentric sister. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of a glacial lake, steeped in family tragedy and the weight of history.
Readers will find a poignant exploration of family life and the complexities of growing up amid loss and survival. The novel delves into themes of transience and the impact of a challenging environment on personal development. Through Ruth and Lucille’s experiences, the story reflects on the interplay between memory and identity, set against the backdrop of 20th-century American life. This edition offers a thoughtful engagement with literary fiction, inviting readers to reflect on the nuances of familial relationships and the passage of time.
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Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson’s 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, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.
The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town “chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere.”
Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.
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