Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson One of the best books ever- 10 out of 10

 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson


One of the best books ever- 10 out of 10

 

Housekeeping is a wonderful novel.

TIME magazine has included it in the list of best 100 books of the 20th century.

This why I started reading it and it was a pleasure to be in the company of the women and the girls in the book.

They are very odd, to say the least- I mean a few of them anyway- but that probably makes them even more appealing.

They say that with the number of books that you read you increase the number of lives that you live, along with the characters within.

It is probably even more accurate when the personages are far from common, for when at center stage we have ordinary people it is not that thrilling.

The heroine of the story is Ruthie and she is also the narrator.

She and her sister Lucille are raised by a few of their relatives- Helen, their mother is the first to take care of them, but she kills herself.

After mother is gone, a couple of strange- I am tempted to say, but then who is not different here- aunts take over the household.

The aunts do not fit in and they do not get along with children and life in the countryside, they have some habits that do not work in Fingerbone, Idaho.

Sylvie, Helen’s sister comes back home to watch over Ruthie and Lucille, interrupting her life as a kind of drifter.

Sylvie seems to have in her genes the tendency to self-destruct which had pushed her sister off the cliff to suicide.

Lucille grows ever more unhappy with the atmosphere created and the habits of her aunt and sister and leaves home.

There are indeed some incidents that catch the attention of the community and the school officials, worried by the fact that the sisters have abandoned their studies.

The household is in disarray, with Sylvie used with travelling and not with cleaning up and placing things in order.

As a free spirit and a lover of new places and trains, Sylvie does not fit in an ordered settled life and I can only admire the sacrifices she makes.

The people who live in Fingerbone are not enthusiastic about the ways of their new neighbor and become more than hostile.

They even send the sheriff in, with the message that children who are not cared for properly, end up under the jurisdiction of the state.

After a long night trip, through the woods and on the lake, the natives are getting ever more restless and an investigation is going to take place.

It becomes ever more apparent that the authorities will end up taking Ruth- at least- away…Lucille is already out of the household.

I would say that the attitude and plain revulsion showed by Lucille only make things worse, pleading for the accusation.

The fact that Ruthie and Sylvie take a short train only confirms the suspicions of villagers who mean well, but would cause so much harm

-          Hell is paved with good intentions

The descriptions are fabulous and the atmosphere is fantastic in what is indeed one of the best books ever written

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