Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

I have been meaning to read this book for over a decade, ever since I read Gilead for the first time in college in... 2007? Wow, that was a long time ago. I loved Gilead and thought I should read something else written by Robinson, but it has taken me this long to actually get around to it. And guess what? After all that time and planning... I really didn't like it. I don't know what it was, exactly. I think that part of it was that the story was kind of sad and depressing to me, although it wasn't necessarily meant to be. It was the story of two girls, Ruthie and Lucille, and their scattered upbringing with their grandmother, then two great-aunts, and then their aunt, and it just made me sad how they lacked everything that kids need to survive and thrive. Ruthie was the narrator, and none of the story seemed all that sad, even though it was, because her voice was so detached and unemotional. But I couldn't stop thinking about how depressing it all was, and how much this upbringing would be damaging to any child, to have their mother abandon them and commit suicide, and to lose their grandmother after a few years (even though she wasn't the most warm and caring caretaker), and to be taken care of by a very transient, unattached aunt who they were never sure was going to stick around. Lucille reacts to all this by wanting so badly to be normal and have normal routines and to look normal, and she eventually runs away to move in with a teacher. But Ruthie becomes almost like a ghost--you never get a sense that she talks, almost at all, and she just lets herself morph into another version of her aunt, becoming impermanent and unattached to anyone and anything. They eventually run away and leave their town and become drifters.

Something that stands out about Gilead is Robinson's beautiful prose and slow, meditative style. That applies here too, but I felt like it dragged considerably, and did not work as well as it did in Gilead. (I'm sure that was just me, though... since plenty of other people love this book.) There were some parts when I was just dying to get through it, and it felt so, so slow. (Like the day when Sylvie and Ruthie go to the mountains and are searching for imaginary children, and then get stuck on the boat overnight... I just did not understand what was going on or why it was so slow.) But there were some parts that were just beautiful, particularly the many parts about memory and transience and how things change over time. There was so much about loneliness and how people can see into houses in the dark when the lights are on, and how people outside feel alone. All of these parts were beautifully written and worth pondering, and all struck a chord with me.

"I do not think Sylvie was merely reticent. It is, as she said, difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows." (page 53)

"Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, 'Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it.' Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire." (page 154)

"It was difficult work, but I have often noticed that it is almost intolerable to be looked at, to be watched, when one is idle. When one is idle and alone, the embarrassments of loneliness are almost endlessly compounded." (page 158)

"Sylvie did not want to lose me. She did not wish me to grow gigantic and multiple, sot hat I seemed to fill the whole house, and she did not wish me to turn subtle and miscible, so that I could pass through the membranes that separate dream and dream. . . . She could forget I was in the room. She could speak to herself, or to someone in her thoughts, with pleasure and animation, even while I sat beside her--this was the measure of our intimacy, that she gave almost no thought to me at all. But if she lost me, I would become extraordinary by my vanishing." (page 195)

All in all, I think this book was worth reading for all of these parts and all of these thoughts that Robinson does such a beautiful job of expressing and describing. I think she is an amazing writer and thinker. I just couldn't get into this story, and I felt like there were parts of the book that I wanted to be over much more quickly, but all in all, I'm glad to have read it and to have gotten out of it what I did. Maybe if I read it again in a different stage of life, I will be able to appreciate it more and get more out of it.