Housekeeping

Housekeeping
By Marilynne Robinson (219 pages)
Published by Picador
Bookish rating: 4.5

Housekeeping is something of a bildungsroman, a novel of a girl coming of age. Also author of the oh so good Gilead, Robinson is a mind-blowingly gifted writer. Her words and images contain so, so many layers, and all the while she keeps moving the novel forward, almost with the sense of water lapping at a shore--a tide, perhaps.

Which is appropriate, because water is a big 'ole symbol in Housekeeping, as Ruth and her sister Lucille dwell near an enormous lake, complete with a bridge. And trains.

After Ruth's mother dies, she's raised by her grandmother and finally her aunt, Sylvie, who is distant and weird but kind. Housekeeping toys with the idea of impermanence, the body or the home as the tangible shell of what holds before you cease to exist, time, God, and death. And, well, life, really.

Highly, highly recommended.