"Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson

In "Housekeeping" Marilynne Robinson establishes herself as the very best of living American authors. This novel perches on the fraught balance between living and dead, drowning and flying, orthodox and outcast.

In a lonely town in the Far West, where "the history of the world happened elsewhere," there is a house owned by Sylvie and Ruth's family. Sylvie is Ruth's aunt and is very little more than a drifter. Lucille is Ruth's younger sister and she occupies the house. This remote town sits on the shore of Lake Fingerbone, a deep and dark expanse of water that has claimed, in circumstances dark or disastrous or both, the lives of some of Ruth's forebears, including her mother. Sylvie comes back to the house with Ruth, but has no intention of staying. In one of the book's very significant episodes she and Ruth try to traverse the lake by crawling along the railroad bridge that arches over the water, and although this attempt fails, we know where Sylvie's heart, and eventually Ruth's too, lie. They want to traverse Fingerbone (to abjure working their fingers to the bone, as it were), take to the road, and see what tomorrow brings. They ultimately do not want the anchor of the house. Lucille, the orthodox member of the family, cannot understand the impulse, and is completely willing to settle down and make a go of things. Every feeling we get from this character is that she will succeed at it.

This was my introduction to Ms. Robinson, and I was completely stunned, awestruck. Her striking gift with words is well-known (see "Gilead" and "Home" and assorted non-fiction), but it's her gift with the larger issues in her stories that sweeps me away here. She poses an age-old question: how do you measure success in life? Are our hopes for material success doomed endlessly? Is an orthodox career through life as heavy as a lake, as suffocating as a bottomless body of water?

This is one of the best books I have ever read, or will ever read. Ms. Robinson fills me with wonder at her conception and her execution. Read it for the thrill of having a classic in the author's lifetime.

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"The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought" by Marilynne Robinson

This book is next to impossible to rate: you want to alert readers to the loveliness of the prose, and I for one wanted to admire the logic and cogency of the arguments, for I love and cherish this writer. And yet ... the essays (the ones I read) are, as promised, contrarian in nature. Ms. Robinson objects to the lionization of Darwin, pointing out that he was an unabashed racist and eugenicist, and that his legacy is used as cover for callous and radically greedy economists and social scientists. She certainly does not question the fact of evolution, but objects to any requirement that the faithful should have to prove their God exists. She also objects to such presumption and insulting behavior in her graceful and radiant novel, "Gliead."

The reader interested in a unique take on modern beliefs and mores would be hard-pressed to do better than take up this collection of essays. I was not always persuaded that her didactic constructs fit her arguments. I was sometimes bewildered by juxtapositions, and felt that they arose from an angry, not necessarily studied, stance.

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"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson

"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson is a long contemplation of growing old - this is a valediction, but more than that it is an etude on life's moral verities. I don't know what I was expecting after the shining tour de force of "Housekeeping," the previous novel of Ms. Robinson's, but I don't think I was expecting this. I wouldn't say I was disappointed because this is an impressive, thought-provoking work. It took me by surprise by its depth, and by the weight of its subject matter.

Reverend John Ames, the third in a line of Congregationalist ministers, fathers a child very late in life; he's sixty-nine years old when his son is born. "Gilead" is his series of letters to his son, and a very personal reflection on faith, family, and the interpretation of grace. The reverend comes from a place where moral actions mark and make one's life. His grandfather, the first Reverend Ames, took up the cause of John Brown and a free Kansas, and could not comprehend his son's (our protaganist's father's) reservations and judgments on that issue. This conflict clearly establishes the awe and uncertainty with which the pious encounter and consider their God.

Our Reverend Ames has experienced a dynamic and difficult relationship with his godson, the offspring of another preacher in town. His late-coming biological son embodies his second chance at the challenging and rewarding arena in which familial relationships are worked out. He is thankful for the chance at a time in his life in which he has had at least a chance to consider all the consequences and ramifications of faith and love.

This book is a lovely, understated study. It's balanced in considering human interaction, reverberant, humble, dignified, and straightforward. Do yourself a massive favor and pick it up.

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