Housekeeping

Rating:
Summary: A review on Housekeeping
Review: Housekeeping is a wonderful book to read. It is a story about finding and having a place to belong. The main character, Ruth and her younger sister Lucille grow up in one house but are raised by four different members of their family. Throughout the book it is clear that Ruth and her sister never lose the feeling of being homeless and alone. On page 66 Lucille says that she is tired of being alone and wants to find other people. Then Sylvie replies "Loneliness bothers lots of people....".
I really enjoyed reading this book because I was able to get inside the characters' head and feel like I was in the story. Everything was so real it was like I was Ruth and I was feeling what she felt. And all the images painted such a clear picture for me, that just added to my feelings towards the book. But what I didn't like about this book was that there was no happy ending. It ended with no conclusion. I would have liked to kept on reading about what happened with Lucille and Ruth and Sylvie.
I would highly recommend this book to someone because it was a good story and it had situations that people could really relate to. I also liked the style of writing that the author used. She starts out by giving some background information and then takes the story form there. Another great thing she does is she introduces the different characters as they come in and tells a bit about them. She also does a great job in using descriptive words so that the reader is able to picture the scene from the book in his or her head. "...suave cones or mounds, single or in heaps or clusters, green, brown, or white depending on the time of day." It was a wonderful story and I wouldn't mind reading it again.

Rating:
Summary: Good but slow
Review: I found this book on my book club reading list and wanted to give it a try. As wonderful as this story is, you must have a long time to read this book. It will start off very quickly and it seems to be moving right along. Next thing you know it has been weeks and you can't seem to finish the chapter. I have been told by other people who have read this that it has happen to them. You find yourself slowing down to the pace of the story. If you have the time to read "Housekeeping" do it, otherwise wait until you have the time.

Rating:
Summary: I tried so hard to like this book
Review: I just finished reading "Gilead" and found it to be brilliant and beautiful so I searched out a library copy of Housekeeping. I'm so sorry that I was disappointed. I could just never get interested in these people. The premise of what "homelife" should be compared with what it often is could have been an interesting one, but I just could not connect. I'm sure the author is an exceptional writer and well worthy of respect. I hope she doesn't wait so long to write again; in spite of not liking this one, I would want to read more of Robinson

Rating:
Summary: "I was breaking the tethers of need, one by one."
Review: In the novel, "Housekeeping", sisters Ruthie and Lucille are hastily dropped off at their Grandmother's house. Their mother--a rather odd woman who seems to suffer from bouts of depression never returns. The grandmother raises the two little girls, and after she dies, two elderly relatives take over the task. But then mysterious Aunt Sylvie returns and stays to take care of the girls. The problem is that Aunt Sylvie is more than a bit strange--"Every story she told had to do with a train or a bus station." Sylvie is, in fact, a transient, who has returned home to assume responsibilities that she doesn't want and that she's really mentally and emotionally unprepared for.

This is quite simply a beautiful novel. On the back cover of my copy, other writers and critics praise the book, and in particular, the writer's lyrical use of language is mentioned--over and over again. As readers, we are used to flattering reviews of books, but the praise for Robinson's use of language is not hyperbole. "Housekeeping" is an exquisitely written book. I can't really think of a writer whose skills compare with Robinson's talented use of language.

The novel is set in the small town of Fingerbone, and the family home is set next to a daunting and often deadly lake. The descriptions of the terrain are quite amazing: "Buttercups are the materialization of the humid yellow light one finds in such places...but the deep woods are as dark and stiff and as full of their own odours as the parlor of an old house."

Ruthie--the sister who bounds closely to Sylvie, narrates the novel. Their home life is far from normal, and the sisters' opinions about Sylvie become a pivotal part of the story. Sylvie's failure to conform is acceptable only within certain boundaries, and once those boundaries are crossed there is no turning back. This is a story about conformity, loss, and identity. I heartily recommend this haunting novel. I read it many years ago, and just recently re-read it after I saw it on a top-100 best book list. I think I appreciate it more for the second reading--displacedhuman.

Rating:
Summary: "I was breaking the tethers of need, one by one."
Review: In the novel, "Housekeeping", sisters Ruthie and Lucille are hastily dropped off at their Grandmother's house. Their mother--a rather odd woman who seems to suffer from bouts of depression never returns. The grandmother raises the two little girls, and after she dies, two elderly relatives take over the task. But then mysterious Aunt Sylvie returns and stays to take care of the girls. The problem is that Aunt Sylvie is more than a bit strange--"Every story she told had to do with a train or a bus station." Sylvie is, in fact, a transient, who has returned home to assume responsibilities that she doesn't want and that she's really mentally and emotionally unprepared for.

This is quite simply a beautiful novel. On the back cover of my copy, other writers and critics praise the book, and in particular, the writer's lyrical use of language is mentioned--over and over again. As readers, we are used to flattering reviews of books, but the praise for Robinson's use of language is not hyperbole. "Housekeeping" is an exquisitely written book. I can't really think of a writer whose skills compare with Robinson's talented use of language.

The novel is set in the small town of Fingerbone, and the family home is set next to a daunting and often deadly lake. The descriptions of the terrain are quite amazing: "Buttercups are the materialization of the humid yellow light one finds in such places...but the deep woods are as dark and stiff and as full of their own odours as the parlor of an old house."

Ruthie--the sister who bounds closely to Sylvie, narrates the novel. Their home life is far from normal, and the sisters' opinions about Sylvie become a pivotal part of the story. Sylvie's failure to conform is acceptable only within certain boundaries, and once those boundaries are crossed there is no turning back. This is a story about conformity, loss, and identity. I heartily recommend this haunting novel. I read it many years ago, and just recently re-read it after I saw it on a top-100 best book list. I think I appreciate it more for the second reading--displacedhuman.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical, haunting masterpiece
Review: Incredible writing and a vivid sense of place make "Housekeeping" a modern masterpiece, marred only by a bit of Oprah Book Club-style melodrama. The lake and the Idaho community this book is set in come to life as a kind of timeless archetype of the Far West, complete with climate calamities, sudden violence and extreme isolation. In some spots, Robinson's lyricism makes the plot a bit hard to follow, but that said, certain images from this book will stay with me forever.

Rating:
Summary: a master and a pro
Review: Let me give you the scoop on Marilynne Robinson. She is a classy woman and writer. I am taking a seminar with her cureently, as a student at the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. No one has shown me more about literature in just a few weeks than this scholar and artist has. Housekeeping is a work of elegance and majesty. May her colleagues at the Workshop worship her as I do. They might learn something in the process!

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical, haunting and depressing
Review: Marilynne Robinson has a gift with writing that is at once haunting, lyrical and wonderfly evocative. Her story of a family living in a remote part of Idaho is in moving but also very sad. I noticed the bookjacket had many reviews commenting on the "humor" in the book and while there is some humor, overall, the story of 2 sisters who become orphans and are eventually cared for by a transient aunt who is mentally ill, made me very sad. The descriptions of the terrain and town where the story takes place are incredibly well done. In some ways, the description reminded me of the book "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. The book moves somewhat slowly due to the description but a second re-reading of many of the lines bring out just how talented a writer Robinson is. What Robinson also has talent for is the ability to describe the interior life and how we never truly know what goes on in others lives by looking at them from without.

This is a remarkable novel and the only reason I rated it a 4 and not a 5 is that I was a little unsettled by the "celebration" of Sylvie's lifestyle and character when it was clear that her actions were hurtful to the two sisters.

Rating:
Summary: Housekeeping will help you get your ZzZzZzZz
Review: One of the dullest books I've ever picked up in my life. I don't have narcolepsy or a short attention span, but the writing in this novel is so dull (is the dullness the point? I'll grant that she did a good job of making it) that it took less than three sentences before it bored me to the point that I had an overwhelming urge to sleep. It was as if something was trying to draw my eyelids closed, and I fought and fought until about twelve pages in I could fight no longer. I closed my eyes and let the book fall from my hands. Under the somnolent spell of Robinson's prose no more, I felt wakeful again, and picked up a book by Nabokov, someone who (unlike Robinson) delights in language, deplores symbolism, and knows how to turn a phrase.

I give Housekeeping 2 stars because I didn't read the entire thing and for all I know there could have been some verbal wizardry and vibrant characterization on par with Shakespeare in the pages that followed. Probably not, so I didn't bump the rating up TOO high.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical prose in an uncompelling story
Review: The event that apparently drives the narrator and her relatives to insanity, a train wreck in which a father is killed, seems unlikely to provoke the mental chaos attributed to it. One daughter becomes an African missionary, one has two daughters and commits suicide, and the third becomes homeless person. The homeless sister comes to care for her nieces after their grandmother's death. Granny was a paragon of housekeeping skills and the art of rearing a family. It seems inconceivable that her daughters could be so depressed. That they are crazy there is no doubt. What is still in question is whether this is a hereditary illness, since the narrator apparently suffers the same fragile hold on reality that her sucidal mother and her crazy aunt hold, or is caused by the sudden disappearance of her mother. I found the entire story depressing and also unconvincing, and I wish I didn't read it. Unlike Doris Lessing, I found myself skipping large sections of boring, lyrical nonsense as the narrator descends deeper into mental illness, from a normal, but frightened child, to a fully dysfunctional teenager. One does wonder if this poor kid might have been spared the life of a nutty vagrant if the sheriff and do-gooders of Fingerbone had noticed the aunt's housekeeping wasn't quite right early on. The other sister, Lucille, was the only character in the novel who seemed remotely based on how a real child in these circumstances might react. She alone made the story bearable.