Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson
Summary
Sisters Ruth and Lucille are raised by a series of increasingly unconventional relatives after their mother's suicide, eventually settling under the care of their drifting, transient aunt Sylvie in a small Idaho lake town where the line between eccentricity and abandonment grows steadily thinner. Robinson writes in dense, meditative prose that treats the natural landscape and the act of housekeeping itself as metaphors for memory, loss, and the instability of home. The novel remained her only work of fiction for more than two decades before she returned to write Gilead.
Historical Context & Significance
The novel won the PEN Hemingway Award for a distinguished first work of fiction, a debut specific honor rather than one of the major prizes tracked here. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, which went that year to John Kennedy Toole's posthumously published A Confederacy of Dunces.