Housekeeping

Fay, from my not-trollope group today mentioned Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Housekeeping (©1980), reminding me of how much I liked it when it was first published.

It’s about two girls who are raised by an aunt who lives in the American Northwest on a lake where their grandfather died in a train wreck and where their mother drove off a cliff to her death. The aunt’s housekeeping is eccentric – I remember particularly that she leaves a spider to live in his little web in the corner of her room.

Housekeeping is a short novel but it's full of meaning. I appreciated the clarity of Robinson's prose and the many connotations beneath it.

After more than 20 years of silence Robinson published another novel, Gilead, in 2004.