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Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping (Big Book List)

I pulled this book after some time and fatigue in this project. I am not very far in now, but I have pulled some real wild works so far but then I get a book like Augustine’s Confessions and it really puts my mind and attention in a bad place. Faulkner was truly a delight to say that I have read but at times it felt like a chore to get through at times. Then a breath of fresh air arrives in Robinson, and I am fully recharged.

What I think is significant about Robinson’s writing is to read it in reverse. The two tent poles of her writing stand distinct from one another between 25 years of history. Housekeeping is published in 1980, Gilead is published in 2005. The first book is the story of a family of women, with each iteration of that which is traditionally understood to be the roles of women with each other, there is the Grandmother, the absent mother, the carefree Aunt, the busy body Great Aunts, and the sisters. The grandfather is gone from the very first pages of the book. The father of the girls is absent from the text completely. Sylvie’s husband is not even named I don’t think. The only male character that enters this story is the sheriff who is almost completely useless and only enters a level of suspense that is unsettling at times.

 

Gilead focuses almost entirely through the eyes of an elderly man. The concern of Gilead is to retell the life of the main character to his almost silent son while retelling the lives of the previous generations men, grandfather and great grandfather. Women characters are almost peripheral in these letters the elderly father writes to his very young son. The pastor’s wife is a central character but through this medium it is almost that the elderly character is trying to make sense of his wife’s role in his story. It is a fascinating book but without knowing Housekeeping, I don’t think that I properly understood Gilead. I am better for having read this book.

 

Words cannot express how deeply this book affected me. There is too much to say here for a lifetime. There are moments in this text that shattered me, that enthralled me, that enwrapped me in a way that fiction seldom can but that I urn for every time that I crack the spine of a new book. There are things written in this text that are so unnaturally true but effortlessly said that I find it incredulous to think something can be written so beautifully, so precisely, and yet so beautifully true and urgent feeling.

 

The ending of this book is perfect. It is just so perfect that it feels unfair that so much majesty and accuracy and perfectly plotted moment by moment writing is even possible on earth. It is staggering really how unrelentingly beautiful this prose is. I just couldn’t stand it at times. Then there were moments that I couldn’t stop reading which is rare for me. The idea of where this relationship was going at some point seemed the utmost of hilarious absurdity but engrossing in a way that felt like a fever. Then the moment that Sylvie leaves Ruthie on the bank by that abandoned house to feel her way towards the forgotten children was one of the strangest, most challenging moments in fiction I have ever read and how she talks about these moments by herself in the dark feeling the cold, becoming one with the cold and the alone is just masterful and stark and grim and true. I have never read something so acutely accurate in my life. It is everything all wrapped up into one. It is cold now when I am reading this. Unusually cold though we are in the colder months now. I was playing outside with Penny during these cold times, and we are enjoying each other in our exploration of the very cold times and this book and Ruthie sit with me and watch us from over the train tracks. I feel these characters in my bones in a way that I cannot believe it has taken me this long to read this book. I just can’t believe it. This book has been sitting on my shelf for 10 years probably, and I feel robbed to not have read it and let it be my favorite thing for years. 


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