Perhaps all unsheltered people are angry in their hearts. They may even desire to break the roof, spine, and ribs, smash the windows, flood the floor, spindle the curtains, and bloat the couch.

Floods. Moments of homecoming. Departures. Then comes boredom. Languid days follow. School days pass by. Insufferable cold and stasis set in.

Like a somewhat modern take on "Little Women", it is filled to the brim with detailed reminiscences, albeit set in Washington State. It's like a Jane Champion film, or some beloved 90s indie that got lost on a shelf. A film that would have made you intensely cold in the (mostly vacant!) movie theater if you had watched it there.

"Housekeeping" stems from this long tradition of literary accounts of very eccentric, antisocial, neurotic, or depressive aunts. It is a theme that has pervaded through literary history, from "Great Expectations" to "Cider With Rosie", "The Romantics", and even in "Perks of Being a Wallflower!". It functions well. But, like the protagonist in this very solid coming-of-age idyll, we too yearn, anticipate, and covet for something to happen for once... for some great event to finally transpire.

I might as well cut to the chase here: this book was a pretty significant and unexpected disappointment for me.

Housekeeping falls into one of my favorite literary sub-genres: mostly plotless, character-driven novels (e.g. To the Lighthouse, In Search of Lost Time). I'd seen the Pen/Faulkner Award, the "best of" status among recent American books voted on by “writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/fict...), and the high ratings from friends with impeccable taste. But while reading, my emotions were never really aroused, and I feel that Robinson’s flirtations with profundity remain just that, occasionally failing to ring true at all.

My requirements for this sub-genre are few but demanding. I'll go ahead and split them into three groups, although all three bleed together: 1) I need to feel something at some point; 2) the prose should be exceptional in some way, which for me is actually very much tied into #1); 3) my understanding of humanity and myself should be expanded through contact with the characters and their minds.

This book failed me to some degree on each of these points. Regarding point 1, I felt strangely empty and uninvolved throughout, despite reading this under ideal conditions—long, unbroken stretches. The writing is good, even very good, but perhaps I’ve become spoiled or overly-influenced by Modernist stylists. The prose is often plain, occasionally beautiful, and sometimes clunky in its strivings for transcendence. In the end, Robinson’s nondescript approach didn’t capture my imagination.

Perhaps my greatest disappointment was with the characterization. Robinson gathers everyone into two main groups, the conformists and the nonconformists. With the possible exception of Ruthie and Lucille’s grandmother, each character fits neatly into these two types. I couldn't quite follow this specific idea of non-conformity, and I felt as if I couldn't really access or understand their lives, desires, and concerns. We're gently directed to see Lucille as intolerant, but I find her desires entirely reasonable.

Now, one aspect of reviewing that's always annoyed me is when people complain about disliking characters or being unable to relate to them as a reason for disliking a book. But perhaps the important thing is that the characters cause you to feel some emotion and that you can feel these people to be real, multidimensional beings. I didn’t get that from Housekeeping. I couldn’t feel the pain that Ruthie may have been experiencing, and the fallout from bad events and neutral events felt more or less the same. The 'imaginary kids' storyline was a particularly forced attempt at profundity that struck me as silly and unrelatable.

When I say that I have limited access to these characters and this world, and that it ultimately felt untrue, here’s what I mean. There are character revelations and discoveries like the one where Ruthie says, I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much different if I could ever say, This I have learned from my senses, while that I have merely imagined. For each one that I could relate to, there were two or three where I just couldn’t grasp the experience or couldn’t relate to the introspection.

It’s tempting to view this story broadly and crudely. We see the decay that occurs when one stays in the same place. Ruthie must become active and move on, yet a similar impetus drives Lucille. What are we to make of this? Perhaps I expected the wrong things from this book, and I would’ve been better off by just letting it float by without over-considering some of these themes and meanings. And yet, Housekeeping often does “ask” to be taken seriously within the text itself. I’m missing something.

I finished this remarkable book last week, and ever since, I have been lost in its captivating landscape. It's as if I, too, am riding the railcars like Sylvie, journeying from one town to another. Marilynne Robinson has an extraordinary talent for creating characters that draw you in, making you want to live among them and truly understand their souls. These characters are both unique and familiar, struggling with the challenges of connecting with others and dealing with the loneliness that comes from failed connections. The worlds within their own heads are often more real than the external world around them.

How much of our identity is determined by our DNA? Lucille and Ruthie experience the profound loss of their mother through suicide and are then raised by their grandmother, left in the care of their bumbling great-aunts, and finally have to find their way with their off-key aunt, Sylvie. Despite facing similar problems, their reactions couldn't be more different. Lucille views Sylvie as a strange outsider, while Ruthie sees a reflection of herself. There is a palpable sense of isolation, abandonment, estrangement, and yearning throughout the story, as the characters grapple with the desire to belong and the need for freedom.

The efforts that Sylvie and Ruthie make to conform to the roles that society dictates are truly heartbreaking. The prose is filled with a thread of sadness, melancholy, and a sense of near helplessness, yet it is also beautifully lilting. I found myself alternately rooting for the underdogs and despairing of any hope for them.

If Marilynne Robinson had written only this novel, she would have firmly established herself as one of the great writers of her time. However, she has done so much more, and her body of work is truly awe-inspiring. She waited a full 25 years between writing this book and her next, Gilead. I can only hope that she will grace us with a few more masterpieces before she concludes her remarkable career.

Perdita, solitudine, senso di appartenenza, ricordo… Memoria. These are the profound emotions that often tug at our hearts.

Sometimes, we need lightness in our reading, while at other times, we seek the depth of a slow, reflective read. A book that is profound, "laborious", beautiful, and sad, just like a song.

There are moments when the day has passed, and the sun finally sets on the earth, taking with it all that has been lost and conquered. When the day is over, we hope that our journey is concluded, only to discover that we have burned the stages and must return to where we began.

When the night is cold, some people overcome it, while others grow old. Because life is not made of gold. When the bird has flown away, we have no one to keep us company and no place that we can call home.

When the game is over, we carry the ball to the end of the courtyard, having lost what we expected too soon. And now the game is over. When the party is over, it seems truly sad for us. We haven't done the things we wanted, and now there is no more time to start over. Now the party is over.

When the day has passed, the sun finally sets on the earth, together with all that has been lost and conquered. When the day is passed.

You can also check out this video: https://youtu.be/Cyv4qB5Aft4

I had heard an abundance of praise about Marilynne Robinson, which led to my expectations soaring sky high. Perhaps, if they hadn't been so exaggerated, I might have derived more enjoyment from this delicate wisp of a novel.

This book places a greater emphasis on atmosphere rather than plot. In fact, the atmosphere is so thick and palpable that it serves as a pretext for all those beautifully crafted sentences.

So, what do we encounter in this understated novel? We have two sisters who are abandoned by their mother, who commits suicide. They are then raised by a succession of inadequate relatives, with the most inadequate of them all being aunt Sylvie, a vagrant turned hoarder.

One of the sisters, Ruthie, wholeheartedly embraces their irregular upbringing. On the other hand, Lucille yearns for a normal life. My heart went out to her, and strangely enough, despite her longing for convention, I found her to be a more captivating character. Regrettably, the reader spends the majority of their time with Ruthie, a rather bizarre and bland character who allows the manic pixie dream girl that is Sylvie to derail her life.

The recurring theme of the book is water, drowning, and submerging. Robinson handles this theme with the same level of subtlety as the writers of the deluge chapters in the Bible.

I didn't find the entire book to be as enchanting as some reviewers on here, but I also didn't detest it as much as some other reviewers. I did appreciate some of the vivid imagery and certain sentences. However, at times, I felt that Robinson was trying a bit too hard. Some of her paragraphs bordered on being acrobatic and ended up being tiresome to read.

“Housekeeping” is an introspective and almost ethereal coming-of-age story. It delves into the hazy division between presence and absence, loss and survival, and radiance and darkness.

Lucille and Ruthie are left in the care of their elderly grandmother in Fingerbone, Idaho. When the old woman passes away, their eccentric aunt Sylvie returns. Her unorthodox personality and unique way of understanding life create a chasm between the two sisters. Sylvie discards what she deems superfluous and acts according to her transient nature. She wanders at night, finding comfort in the silence of darkness, unconcerned about the neighbors' disapproval. Her priorities do not align with the tangible aspects of daily life.

As they grow, Lucille and Ruthie face the uncertainty of existence. They must choose between the rituals of social normality or embrace Sylvie's deeper vision of a parallel world. In this world, memories, dreams, and reality blend, becoming a permanent heritage at the expense of material stability.

The story is filled with symbols of mystical magnitude. A lake floods the region, recalling Biblical myths. The dark, dense woods nearby and an abandoned house with its own life and ghostly children add to the atmosphere. Only those attuned to silence can hear the children.

The idea that we feel absent family members more keenly when they are gone resonates throughout the book. The unfathomable deep waters of the lake become a kind of heaven where our loved ones find shelter. They may never return physically, but they remain present in our dreams and memories, evoking the best version of an alternative reality.

Reading Robinson's prose is a sensory experience. The unruly quality of her abstract thoughts, captured in immaculate words, makes it as beautiful as the wilderness. It is like an untamable creature that can only be admired from afar. It has a life beyond the reader's consciousness.

Sometimes, it reads like poetry, with total harmony in the slow-paced hues of the narrative voice and the uncommon sensitivity that sustains the sinuous meditations on identity, loneliness, and belonging.

Robinson reminds us of the futility of hoarding material wealth. We will leave this world as we came in, helpless and innocent. Her solitary chant may be easily forgotten in the hasty practicalities of life, but we should listen to the sound of her music, which transcends physical boundaries. There is no more doleful or beautiful melody than that of a soul singing.

When I initially read this book, I failed to perceive what all the commotion was about.

Nevertheless, since so many other individuals idolized it, I felt an obligation to give it a second chance.

And indeed, upon the second reading, I discovered that I was able to appreciate it to a greater extent.

The book is so unassuming that it appears to be whispering, which means that it merits a slow and meticulous re-reading.

This time around, I was able to pick up on the subtleties and nuances that I had missed before.

I began to understand the author's intentions and the deeper meanings behind the words.

It was as if a new world had opened up to me, and I was eager to explore every corner of it.

I am now grateful that I gave this book a second chance, as it has become one of my favorites.

I would highly recommend it to others, but I would also caution them to approach it with an open mind and a willingness to read it more than once.

For some inexplicable reason, I had the impression that I had read this before. However, upon closer inspection, I realized that I had not. There are simply no words that can adequately describe the profound impact this book had on me. It was as if I was stumbling through the words when suddenly, Robinson reached out and repeatedly pressed on a bruise within me that I didn't even know existed.

"She had never taught them to be kind to her." This simple sentence holds a world of meaning and heartbreak.

"Sometimes it seemed to me my grandmother saw our black souls dancing in the moonless cold and offered us deep-dish apple pie as a gesture of well-meaning and despair." The imagery in this line is both haunting and beautiful.

"Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth; the house fell on Job's children, and a voice was induced or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind; and Rachael mourned for her children; and King David for Absalom. The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only a brilliant memory...." This passage is a powerful exploration of the themes of loss, grief, and hope.

The theme of memory is indeed embodied throughout the book. It is the key that unlocks so many of the book's deeper meanings and emotions.

This is a deeply true book, one that makes me feel as if Robinson is my true Christian sister. Her words speak to the very core of my being and leave me with a sense of profound understanding and connection.

**Quando è la comunità a fare paura**

On the banks of a cold, windy, and predatory lake, the story of the Stone family takes shape. Two generations of sisters grew up near its unassuring shores. And in the end, this novel is like the lake that is its protagonist: poetic and yet glacial. It tells what happens when a human being (in this case, a woman) finds herself alone, on the margins of a society she wants to belong to but towards which she feels irremediably alien. The lakeside town, whose characteristic is that “the entire human story has happened elsewhere,” at first a strange place, slowly transforms into a hostile one, populated by “shadow” citizens who judge and condemn, and from which, therefore, it is better to hide. In a house that increasingly becomes a fortress to take refuge in from the condemnation of the outside world. And when even the fortress is no longer able to protect solitude, flight remains the only way out. And common sense is reversed: the people and lights that represent living together as reassuring become enemies.

After all, the “drifters,” voluntary vagabonds, are a topos of American literature. They represent the individualistic and solitary soul, the dark and contradictory side of the American way of life, and for this reason, they are considered dangerous, feared, and often the object of discrimination and violence. Just think of Dennis Hopper's film “Easy Rider” or Tennessee Williams' splendid “Orpheus Descending.” But the merit of this book is the poetry with which Robinson manages to tell the soul, the essence of nomadism, of non-belonging, of being alone. But also of living with nothing, affection, house, objects. Living desiring, living imagining because, in the end, feeling with the mind is similar to truly savoring reality.

It shows how a community that is supposed to provide support and a sense of belonging can sometimes turn into a source of fear and exclusion. The story of the Stone sisters is a powerful exploration of the human condition in a society that often fails to understand and accept those who are different.

Housekeeping is a remarkable novel that was published in 1980 and was even nominated for a Pulitzer. It has rightfully earned its place on many top 100 novels of all time lists. I am not at all surprised by this as it is truly a literary treat.

However, it is a deeply sad tale. It can be considered a coming of age story, revolving around the themes of loss and identity. What makes it truly special is the poetic lyricism with which it is told.

The story begins with a tragic event. A train carrying many residents of Fingerbone, Idaho, crashes into a local river, resulting in the deaths of dozens. This event sets the tone for the prominent role that death and loss will play throughout the narrative. But there is so much more going on beneath the surface.

Molly, Helen, and Sylvie, the daughters of Sylvia and Edmund Foster, lose their father in that crash. Molly later disappears into religiosity abroad. Helen elopes to Seattle and returns seven years later with two girls, no husband, and a tragic determination to drive her borrowed car off a cliff. The reason for her actions is never fully explained, but it can be presumed that the loss of her marriage may have contributed. Sylvia raises the girls until her own passing five years later. At this point, the peripatetic Sylvie is called back to Fingerbone to raise her nieces. However, Aunt Sylvie shares some of the darkness that plagued their mother, and her flightiness makes her less than an ideal foster parent. As Lucille grows, she渴望 a more “normal” life than Sylvie can provide, while Ruthie is drawn into Sylvie’s orbit, further encouraging her anti-social tendencies.

The story is told from Ruth’s point of view, with her words representing her actual thoughts rather than her speech. Her imagination is vivid, and we see Sylvie as a somewhat sympathetic character, albeit eccentric and sometimes alarming in her tenuous grip on reality. Although Ruthie loves Lucille, she views her as a typical, overly conformist teenager who is too focused on externals like hair and clothing. Lucille wants to blend in and remain anonymous. She eventually leaves the household to live with her home ec teacher, while Ruth, the outsider, clings ever closer to Sylvie.

The opening line of the book, “My name is Ruth,” has been compared by some analysts, such as Professor Amy Hungerford, to “Call me Ishmael” from another classic. Hungerford also sees resonances with the biblical Ruth, who, like the Ruth in this novel, is forced to wander. However, I think this comparison may be a bit of a stretch, as it is Sylvie who is the true wanderer in this story, and Ruthie who follows in her footsteps. Hungerford also suggests that Robinson was influenced by the transcendentalists, and this can be seen in passages where the characters seem to merge with their landscapes, creating a sense of oneness.

There is a great deal in this novel about belonging and identity, both within the family and in relation to place. Lucille and Ruthie experience multiple losses, including the loss of their father, mother, and grandmother. If the presence of family is so fragile, what is there to hold on to? How much loss can one endure before cracking under the weight, like the poorly designed houses in Fingerbone that cannot withstand the local snow accumulations?

It is also interesting to note how absence can create a powerful presence. There is a wonderful passage in which Ruth wonders at Lucille constantly looking for signs of her missing sister, and in doing so, maintaining her presence.

Finally, words and language play an important role in Robinson’s imagery. The accumulated leaves in their house are mixed with bits of paper containing inscrutable phrases, adding an element of mystery and depth to the story. In another scene, Lucille asks Ruth to look up “pinking shears” in an old dictionary, and Ruth discovers that her grandfather had pressed flowers into the book on the page corresponding to their names. This contrast between the practical and the beautiful adds another layer of complexity to the narrative.

The prose in this work was truly beautiful. Robinson has an amazing ability to paint vivid pictures with words. In fact, this novel was nominated for The Pulitzer Prize. If it were to be awarded solely based on its writing, I could completely understand why.

However, when it comes to the story itself, which is about three generations of women, there isn't all that much substance. It all starts with a train carrying the grandfather into Finger Lake, which has an impact on the lives of these women. The two granddaughters have a non-traditional upbringing as they are raised by a succession of relatives. Their mother commits suicide, and finally, their mother's sister, who lives as a transient, comes to raise the girls. One sister desires a normal life and moves in with a schoolteacher, while the other sister embraces her aunt's transient and highly non-traditional parenting style.

I did like the book, but I had expected there to be a bit more depth and complexity to it. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, but it left me feeling that there could have been more to explore and develop within the story.

I found it extremely difficult to read, yet paradoxically, I didn't want it to come to an end. It was difficult precisely because it was so somber, dark, slow-moving, and filled with sadness.

However, this quiet story, adorned with such beautiful prose, continuously kept me longing for more. I was eager to know what the fate would be of two young girls who had never known their father, lost their mother to suicide, and were left in the care of a succession of relatives over the years, all living in the same house built by their grandfather.

The writing is so vivid and clear that one can almost feel the cold and dampness in this place called Fingerbone, and envision the darkness both outside and within this house. Ruthie narrates, telling not only her own story but also that of her younger sister Lucille. In many respects, though, it is the story of the entire family - their grandparents, their mother, and their aunts, especially Sylvie who comes to live with them when the others pass away or leave.

It is a haunting tale of abandonment, loneliness, and loss, with these characters striving to forge an identity that has, in many ways, been shaped for them by this family history. I was initially drawn to Robinson's beautiful writing and her amazing storytelling in the Gilead trilogy, and I was equally captivated by this, her first novel.

I gave it 4.5 stars because, despite being a short book, it felt a little sluggish in its pacing. Overall, though, I simply couldn't rate it any lower than 5 stars. Her work is truly a treasure that will stay with me for a very long time. I earnestly hope that she will continue to grace us with more of her wonderful writing.