Housekeeping
(novel)1980
Marilynne Robinson
I didn't discover Frederick Buechner or Flannery O'Connor until I was in my 30s, so I guess I should not be surprised by my record that I did not discover Marilynne Robinson until 2 years ago, and even more not shocked that I hadn't read her first novel until just this week. It was published in 1980. Where was I exactly?
Incredible. Here is my favorite line from the book after my first read, as I'm sure I'll read this again, and possibly again after that, for it's densely populated word-smithing I'm sure that I have quite skipped over some gems and did not read it slow enough this time. But on pg. 179 of the paperback,
"The sorrow is that every soul is put out of house."
There it is. That's the book in as few words as possible. And the belief that interlaces every page, like a ghost behind the paragraphs, always there. The prose is multilayered, but after this read, I've also picked up on Robinson's style. And that is summed up later in the book within the context of the story actually, when Ruthie talks about "facts", as she exclaims in the narrative voice that, "Facts don't explain things....it's Facts that need an explanation".
That is, in fact, what Marilynne does. Her work is character driven, not plot heavy at all. Yes, there certainly is one, and at times because of the absence of heavy plotting we are absolutely groaning to find out "what happens". She does allow this, eventually, but there is the weaving in and out of present tense reality to that of peeling back the layers of that reality to reveal divine undergirding, and concomitantly the barrenness of the human condition. ..."every soul is put out of house" is the point of reference upon which the entire ship floats, and this holds true for all of her work, especially that of the trilogy Gilead, Home, and Lila, all of those gems that I have read prior to this early work. Now I see the germination of those novels back this far ago, the seeds of Lila, the son of Boughton drifting, the images throughout of children bereft of parents or held back from life by forces beyond them.
Great stuff. A must read, even if you have taken this long to get around to it as I have.
Agitatus
