Last Thoughts On Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping
The form is beautiful: the book is an underground river.
Housekeeping begins “My name is Ruth” and then drills down two generations and proceeds toward the surface. History becomes story which becomes meditation*. If it begins with a sentence which is just a self—My name is Ruth—it ends with a heartbreaking act of imagination and empathy, in which the narrator is almost dissolved into her concern for someone she has hurt.
*I think the difference between history and story is that, in the latter, we participate in the character’s choices.
Photo Credit: JPG Magazine: Photos: “Red Umbrella On Crossroad” by Silvijo Selman
