Housekeeping

As a writer, every time I read Marilynne Robinson, I am equal parts inspired and discouraged, because her prose and character development are so amazing and I'll never be that good. Most will never be that good.

“Housekeeping” is an expertly crafted tale of abandonment, isolation, and transience. It is captivating but something you'll want to read slowly to savor every word, phrase, and description.

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of the United States of Books Project.
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It's time for my home state here in this little series we're doing: Idaho, featuring the book Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Set in the fictional town of Fingerbone, in the Northern part of the state, about 50-60 miles from the Canadian border (not information from the book, that's just me trying to orient those of you looking at a map).

Lucille, and her older sister Ruth, are raised in the same house their mother grew up in. We're told straight away that following their mother's death they lived with their grandmother, then her two sisters, and finally their mother's younger sister. The circumstances surrounding these transitions are revealed gradually – none of the adults in their lives were cut out for parenting (Grandmother was at one point, and probably would've sufficed if she hadn't died).

This is not a plot-driven book, and it's hard to talk about what plot there is without telling you everything – so I'll be vague. Ruth tells us about her grandfather's death; them coming to live in his old house; life with grandmother, great-aunts, and aunt; and then things really start happening as she and Lucille enter adolescence and I'm not going to ruin anything by finishing this sentence properly. On page 27, I wrote “this text is so beautiful, I don't care what happens, I'm going to love this book.” Thankfully, I was right – because once things happened, I really didn't like it – but I loved reading the book. There are other characters in the book, but they're of so little importance, I'm not going to say anything beyond acknowledging their existence. The focus is on the girls, their family and the really old house i which they all reside.

Thematically, this book is about loneliness, family ties, waiting for someone/something. I'm not sure there's much difference in Ruth's mind between loneliness and waiting (nor am I that sure that there's much difference in my mind between them as I write this). For young girls to have this much upheaval in their parental figure(s), loneliness and loss are going to loom large in their psycho-social development – and they're not going to respond the same way to things. You add some pretty perceptive thoughts about loneliness to Robinson's prose and you've got yourself a winner of a book.

So what do we learn about Idaho here? Nothing. Fingerbone could be any small city/large town in the U.S. There is nothing distinctive Idaho about this book. Well, almost nothing. There's a lot of mentioning of local place names (mostly cities, incidentally, that most non-Idahoans are going to mispronounce) – enough so that we all know that Fingerbone is just Sandpoint's nom de plume, but that's as “Idaho” as we get here. Take out the local names and this could be in any state that has lakes, forests and railroads – which pretty much covers all 50, right? I don't know why Robinson didn't just use the actual town's name – but, whatever. The fact that Entertainment Weekly thinks this novel “best defines” Idaho probably says more about the dearth of books set here than anything else.

Lyrical, haunting, insightful, beautiful – this is prose that'll stick with you. I didn't like the ending, but it worked and was earned, so I can get over it. Don't worry about the story, focus on the telling of it and you'll likely agree, this is stunning stuff.

Robinson achieves something fairly rare in this novel–although her second effort, Gilead is an even more stunning example of it–each character, both large and small, is treated with the utmost compassion. Things move slowly, this being the Midwest, but everything is beautiful. Really, quite a treat.

I am a huge fan of Marilynne Robinson's book, Gilead, so Housekeeping has always been a book that I have wanted to read.

Now I have. I am sad to say that it isn't a new favorite.

Housekeeping is the story of two sisters who grow up with a succession of poor mother figures. One of the sisters, Lucille, adjusts to the lack of structure in her life by assimilating to the larger culture. The other sister, Ruth, adjusts by taking on a nomadic life.

I was struck by the loneliness of the characters, and to their inability to form deep relationships with others.

It was not a read that I enjoyed or would share with others.

10/09
I re-read this and might bump it up to five stars. Lovely.
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01/07
i started reading this over winter break and i have like... not very much left, but it's so good that i want to make sure i devote proper reading attention to the last bit and i haven't found the chance for that yet :O and by now i've probably forgotten the first half of the book.
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Finally finished it! I loved it, basically. Now I want to re-read it all together, without a big pause in the middle. But it's really less about plot and more about her careful, precise, beautiful prose. A good book to savor.

Short Review: This is Robinson's first novel. The main elements of her writing are here. Atmospheric descriptions, lots of internal dialogue, virtually no plot, lots of insightful character development.

I get way people do not always like Robinson. But even this book, which I didn't love, has lots to recommend about it. But I would not recommend it as the first. Read Gilead or Lila first, if you like those then come back and read this one.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/housekeeping/

There will come a time in a conversation with a stranger or a new friend when they will ask me why my work has taken me to so many different countries, why I never stayed in place for too long. The answer I always give, somewhat cheekily, somewhat accurately, is that “I get antsy after more than three years in one city.”

It has been five years since I last moved back to Toronto. Before that, for more than a decade, I jumped from city to city every two or three years, always looking for the next new thing, looking for a new adventure or challenge or just a change of pace and scenery.

About a year after moving back to Toronto, a former friend once laughed and called me a transient, a drifter. He chuckled as he said, in jest and in good nature, that if I had been born a few decades earlier, I would have been among those that rode the freight trains, jumping off in a new town and setting up life there, only to pack up and leave a short while later.

There has been much written about transience in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping; a quick search online reveals academic papers on the subject that are longer than the novel itself. It's true that the story is primarily about moving, and moving on—what struck me most is how the book is also about the difficulty of staying home.Our protagonist is caught between these two worlds, and perhaps perpetually caught between many worlds: Ruthie never really finds her place until the end of the novel, and even then, that place is fleeting. Ruthie exists in liminality, between childhood and adulthood, between frivolity and seriousness, between feeling and thinking, between bad mistakes and good judgment, between carelessness and responsibility, between the desire to run and the desire to stay.Mrs. Robinson's prose captures the limbo beautifully. She uses words like brushstrokes on a canvas. The story is more painting than text: it changes and morphs and reveals new insight upon every read depending on how close you are to it that day. At times, you feel enveloped by the bleakness of Fingerbone; at others, you sit away from it, watching the town in wonder as its inhabitants go about their lives with a sorrowful merriment.As readers, we are never in one place. Mrs. Robinson makes us feel the transience of the characters of the novel through her prose, by making the reader drift through space and time and perspective. We are constantly moving, and even when we are staying still, we await the next time we will be displaced. The descriptions are vivid, memorable; the amount of time we are able to linger upon those descriptions are short and fleeting. With every turn of the page, we are led to wonder what adventures lie beyond the bridge across the lake, yet still want to stay in Fingerbone for a little while longer.Housekeeping is masterful at telling this story of transience, not because it is about always leaving to go somewhere new, but because it places us in the grey zone between the old and the new, the then and the now, the here and the there. It is a tale of liminality more than transience, of the embrace of uncertainty.

There's a line, about halfway through Housekeeping, that reads: “It seemed to me that if she could remain transient here, she would not have to leave.”

It is a short passage that is easy to quickly read past, but it is one I came back to, again and again. It reminded me of a revelation that came to me when I lived in the US capital.

It was in Washington DC when I first realized that it was easy for me to live a life where all my possessions could fit into two or three boxes. It was in Washington DC when I first realized that I had remained, for many years before that, transient in the cities where I lived.

DC is the most transient city I have ever known: nobody there stays, but instead “passes through.” Sometimes, they pass through for a few months, or a couple of years, and sometimes, they pass through for a few decades, but there were very few people that I might that were born in the District and planned to die there too.

Sylvie, in Housekeeping, is also passing through. We did not know for just how long she would stay, but we knew that one day, she would hop on the train and ride the tracks across the bridge to a new adventure. In the meantime, she would act erratically and oddly—transiently—while she remained in Fingerbone with her nieces.

For years before my recent return to Toronto, I was only passing through every city in which I lived. I knew that I would soon be gone, but didn't know quite when that time would come. Instead, I would live minimally, with few possessions, and would spend my time as an explorer in my own town. To some, perhaps I was erratic and odd; to myself, I was simply transient, prepared at any moment to leave, but willing myself to stay.

I am no longer transient here. While I know that, realistically, I will undoubtedly be somewhere new soon, I no longer spend my time in expectation of that move. The liminality has been replaced by a sense of settlement: I feel settled in place, in mind, in love, in life, and no longer caught between one space and another.

(Full review on ITellStories.org)

I was expecting to enjoy this much more than I did, but maybe it was just the wrong time for me. It felt overwritten and boring, although I usually love the kind of thing they call ‰ЫПsumptuous prose‰Ыќ and the kind of stories where ‰ЫПnothing happens‰Ыќ. There were parts I really enjoyed, like the train at the bottom of the lake and all the flooding and the cabin in the woods that had sunk into its cellar and the final efforts at cleaning house. But it felt like it should have been a short story or a novella, not a novel.