Housekeeping

I expected to love this novel, and perhaps expectations are to blame. It is amazing on a sentence level. The prose is exquisite and superbly creative with language – quite like Cormac McCarthy at times in its stripping away of the physical world in exploration of what lies beneath. In spite of this stripping away of the physical world, Robinson still creates a solid sense of place; her fictional town of Fingerbone and its lake were fully crafted and central to all that happens in the book. But unfortunately the story never goes anywhere. The cast is slim, and the few characters who move at all could be said to drift more than they arc.

Given her significant power with language, I'm sure I'll read Robinson again, whether Gilead or some of her well-regarded non-fiction.