Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson
1981
Rating: 5.5

I made it 95 pages into this short novel but am putting it down, despite the fact that it’s packed with astonishing language.

The reason I’m putting it down is — I can’t emphasize how subjective this is — I feel it gets bogged down in descriptions of interiors at the expense of plot. I struggled for similar reasons with Possession.

Related, but maybe separate, is that, while some of the writing was among the best I’ve read in a novel, it could also at times be quite dense, which is probably an effect Robinson was striving for. So, maybe I just don’t have the attention span for this book, and if you have more of an attention span than I do (you probably do), you should ignore my gripes about it.

Despite the fact that I’m putting it down, I am really glad that I gave it a whirl, no regrets, because I feel like some of those sentences are going to stay with me for the rest of my life.