Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

 

Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson

Ruth and Lucille's mother drives her car into a lake. The same lake their grandfather perished in. They are left with their grandmother who takes care of them for a few years before she passes. The grandmother's nervous, cautious, and gossipy sisters come to care for them until they decide to write to the girls' aunt Sylvie to see if she will come and relive them of their burden.

Sylvie is transient and the girls fear she is unstable, that she will leave them or try to kill herself as their mother did. As they mature, Lucille becomes embarrassed by Sylvie's nature. Both girls continue to believe one day Sylvie will board one of the trains that passes through their town (Fingerbone) and disappear forever. Lucille begins to pretend their mother didn't abandon them and kill herself. She makes up stories about her instead. The girls are growing apart; Lucille accuses Ruth of becoming like Sylvie and their mother. Lucille wants to escape that fate and so she leaves home to live with her home economics teacher. She and Ruth grow apart.

Sylvie takes Ruth by boat to a little valley to look for imagined children at an abandoned house. They are out all night and return home by train car. The people of Fingerbone worry about Ruth and don't believe Sylvie is a proper caregiver. They bring by food and clothes and send the Sheriff to look in on her. In an attempt to preserve the family unit of two, Sylvie unclutters the house and makes changes to it and herself, but the authorities nevertheless will come for Ruth.

Sylvie and Ruth set fire to the house and walk across the bridge that spans the lake that no one has ever crossed on foot, hop a train, and disappear. The people think they drowned in the lake. Instead, they become drifters and lose all contact with Lucille.

Housekeeping is about keeping a household together; about holding the physical house together and the family within it. It is about how people are generally unremarkable until they are gone or missing. Women and sisterhood, what kind of women will the girls become? Transience and impermanence, what will happen if one gives in to impermanence? Memory. This is the story of nature and time, love and loss, and how we remember those who have gone and how inadequate memory is with what little we have to hold onto.

It's a beautifully-written story. The absence of men is notable. Men mean order in this story, and their isn't any of that. The men leave: the grandfather dies, the girls' father disappears, the Sheriff comes to bring order. The women hold the story, hold the house and the memories together. When they burn the house, they give in to impermanence and the drifting of time and memory.

Housekeeping is a 4-star read. Just shy of being an excellent book because I found myself not really feeling much for the characters. Though the characters are written with sensitivity, I didn't really connect to them. That was my only real issue with the book.