Customer Reviews: Read 146 more reviews...
 A beautiful, haunting book November 17, 2008
Jennifer A. Lawrence (Evanston, IL United States)
Marilynne Robinson's masterfully told story of an atypical "housekeeping" arrangement is strange, funny, sad, lyrical, and inspiring. It is one of the most beautiful books I have read in a long time. I found myself savoring the words, reading aloud to myself. This is a wonderful book.
profundity at your fingertips November 11, 2008
echoes of empires (San Francisco, CA USA)
Housekeeping is one of the most absorbing novels I've ever read, and for me stands alongside "The Apple in the Dark" by Clarice Lispector and "Owls Do Cry" by Janet Frame, which were written about twenty years earlier. Robinson writes of loss, of family love, of people and the ways we want and want not to fit in, as seen through the eyes of two high school age sisters who know great loss themselves, unfolding in a small Idaho town around the time of WWII. Gorgeously poetic, her prose is ripe with imagistic metaphors that express the characters and their wondering with a dreamy and almost mythic profundity; these passages are seamlessly interwoven into more direct expression of the characters' lives, which she writes with insight and truth, and touches of low key humor; her descriptions of the town and the house in which they live, beautiful in their own right, all support the story of the characters' inner lives. This is a story of people's hearts and the losses they encounter, though it does not tell us, exactly, why they have come to be who they are. One of the things I always think about the novel is that it was written by someone who deeply loves people, for that shines through in her portrayal of the characters, even the minor ones we may not care for. Part of what's wonderful about "Housekeeping" is that, given it's perennial wisdom, you can read it every few years and be provoked to think deeply yet again on her themes, and also more deeply appreciate its beauty.
 A long and boring waste November 2, 2008
Donna L Haas
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can't believe people liked this writing. I need a period now and then. Long, rambling piles of meaningless words that lent nothing to the story. I wish it had been a library book instead of a waste of my Kindle selections.
 Worthy of a cursory examination like a fossil October 27, 2008
Robert Katrin (Southern Pines, NC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just read a compelling short story by the new nobel in literature, J.M.G. Le Clezio, "The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea" that compares with the style of "Housekeeping" in its lyrical beauty and description but far surpasses Robinson's novel. I couldn't stop reading the short story and I can't keep reading "Housekeeping." Both authors are immensely gifted, and I haven't read anything else by Le Clezio although I will but I doubt I'll give Robinson another try. I wasn't thrilled by "Gilead" either and I don't think I'll try her latest novel.
I think even if I was marooned on a desert island with nothing else to read, I'd throw "Housekeeping" to the fishes, too bad it couldn't be used as bait. I'ts simply too tedious. One simply tires of the kind of beauty this writer can evoke and you say, "enough already" can you tell me a story? I never got far enough to discover that there was a story.
This may be a case of a writer who is so fascinated with her own ability she just wears you out with it. You could say that this was an arrogant tour de force with no regard for readers. She's like a scientist working long hours in a laboratory studying the minutae of something or other on the verge of making a great discovery no one will care about, but she'll be reknowned among her own kind and her work will reside in scientific journals no one but specialists will read. Maybe she doesn't care, this is the way she spends her time, but its not the way this reader wants to spend his time.
This would have been better as a short story, or maybe a series of linked short stories.
 Moving and memorable (mostly) October 16, 2008
algo41 (cinnaminson, nj United States)
"Housekeeping" has two themes: memory/loss, and alienation. I think Robinson was clearer and more interesting in her treatment of alienation. Both Sylvie and Ruth can pretend to be normal, but just cannot keep up the pretense without being eventually found out, because they just do not find conventional life satisfying, and also feel it threatens their memories of their lost family members.
Robinson is fond of long paragraphs full of imagery and detail. For the most part she carries it off, so that the novel does not sink under the weight of the writing, but rather is moving and memorable.
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