Having thoroughly enjoyed Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead some time ago, I’ve finally gotten around to ordering a copy of her Housekeeping. What spurred this huge plunge of a couple of pounds (33p +p/h) was this fan letter to Robinson posted in Sunday’s New York Times. Here’s a snippert:
There is something so familiar (and familial) in your book’s battle of chaos with humble order. There is a joy in its readiness to care and feed and rescue even the ghosted children. The house at its center reminds me of the house all children draw. There is the work’s certainty that Escape and Transcendence — across one suspended railroad tie at a time — is basically a normative day for most of us on earth.
What I find harder to describe … is how the novel “took” the colors of everyone’s recent struggles, their hard-won victories. Your book seemed to give back whatever a particular reader sought, and at whatever level of questioning could be offered during this reading of the novel. The work offers an un-saccharine promise: that struggle itself remains our sole guaranteed transcendence. A Protestant vision.
After much study, I don’t know how you did it. The book is so much about its making and yet all traces of construction seem obscured. “Housekeeping” seems the least autobiographical work I know and yet it’s also the one closest-in. It’s theological, but it always pertains as immediately as any fairy tale does. Harsh in its outcomes, it’s also a psychological work of such density, restraint. The limpid acceptance of death finds reflection in all its aqueous properties. There are few living males in it and little dry land. Somehow it starts with death and moves toward life, a reversal of most books I know.
I mention this because for the next fortnight, the NYT will be hosting a discussing of the book and some of my regular readers may be interested in getting on board. They’ve already posted the following links:
jasongoroncy.com 