BOOK GROUP: Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson

Date: Wednesday, July 13th
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Fishers Island Library

A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.

The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town “chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere.”

Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award

The library will a copy. I have a copy. I hope that several of you have this wonderful book on your shelves but for those of you who prefer e-books please avail yourselves of the Library’s app on this website.

Please invite friends who might also be interested. The more readers the better and so many people are unable to join on any given night that I don’t think we can have too many people. There are lots of book lovers on the island and it’s really nice to bring the group together. Please feel free to forward this to anyone else you can think of. All are welcome.

As in the past, feel free to bring your own beverage and, if you feel like it, a hors d’oeuvres to share with the group. I don’t want anyone to feel that they have to show up bearing food but for those who enjoy cooking we’d love it if you bring something to nibble on!

Please feel free to get back to me if you have any questions. I look forward to the Library Book Group and hope you do as well.

Best wishes,

Abby McCall
abimccall@gmail.com