Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

Editions

Review

A powerful and atmospheric novel about two sisters in rural America.  Father has disappeared unmissed before Mother leaves them with their grandmother, and then drives herself off a cliff.  Two fussy old aunts step into the breach for a few years, and then go back to their cosy boarding-house leaving the girls in the care of their nutty aunt Sylvie.  The girls are torn between their oddity and the desire to conform as they grow up.

This novel was one of the Observer's '100 greatest novels of all time'.  A surprising accolade perhaps, but it is an astonishing book that manages to articulate a dimension of human experience in a very rare way.  The writing grows in power, so that  by the end you feel that you have been taken somewhere other novels have not been.  I read this book because I had to review Gilead pbk £7.99, which had given me a similar feeling, and I wanted to check out her earlier book.  I was not disappointed. - review by Johnny de Falbe