Today’s book review is a little unusual for me.  Multnomah Publishers offered me the opportunity to review this book, and I was struck by how this could be an important book, because it addresses a topic with which most women can relate.  So, this week, I’m reviewing a Christian sex book (and no, that isn’t an oxymoron).

Kiss me Again: Restoring Lost Intimacy in Marriage, isn’t exactly what the title leads you to believe.  It’s more of a book about digging through your past sexual sins and those committed against you, so that today, you can have a better love life with your spouse.  Ninety percent of the book is focused on looking to the past to heal the future. 

Personally, I was hoping for a few more “how to” tips for today, that weren’t so focused on past sexual sins.  But Barbara Wilson won me over to the importance of dealing with the past before you even have hope in the present and future.  As someone who has worked with many couples as director of sexual health education for a pregnancy resource center, she’s knowledgeable on the research she cites as well as with personal stories of those who have found this information life changing.  The statistic that caught my attention the most was that 95% of people will have sex before they get married, Christian or not (5).  It shows that pre-marital sexual issues are in the majority, so it’s wise to deal with something so overwhelmingly prevalent. 

Wilson deals with a full range of sexual addictions and experiences that can interfere with your healthy, married love life (and she also does a good job showing what a healthy love life might look like).  The book is highly targeted to women, so you’ll find info on pornography use by women (this needed a bit more info, since it’s such a huge issue today), shacking up, and even abuse.  She’s big on wives confessing all to their husbands, openly, and in the right context and timing.  And Wilson encourages a lot of guided, reflective journaling to help you work through the past issues and find healing in Christ.

I appreciated the research minded approach (even if she went a little overboard with attributing most problems to oxytocin issues).  She comes across as very trustworthy, someone who knows this topic through and through.  And while I’m of the impression that meeting one-on-one with a professional Christian counselor is the best way to address these issues, this book might be a second best step, for those who don’t want to see a professional for help. 

What I come away with most from this book is an amazing sense of hope for our marriages.  We have Jesus, the healer, the redeemer, the savior, to help us have the marriages he wants for us.  He doesn’t want us burdened by past sin that corrupts our marriages.  He’s for our marriages, for healthy marriage beds and minds free from guilt and shame.  And it’s comforting to know that no matter our past mistakes, he’s here to make our futures bright. 

Thanks to the folks at Multnomah/Random House Publishers for providing me with a review copy of this book. Visit the publisher’s website to learn more about the book.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Toni Morrison’s latest novel for awhile.  Her books always shoot right to the top of the bestseller list, even though they are often very difficult to read: emotionally, thematically, and stylistically.  Anybody who can write like that but still get wide scale public reading deserves my attention.  Plus, with A Mercy, she took a different approach than she typically does, by expanding the discussion of slavery to the various forms of slavery our country has endured.

The narrative is often times difficult to follow.  It’s Morrison after all, so I’m not surprised. Interestingly, she gives these voiceless characters voices and allows them to tell their own part of the story, which often isn’t in chronological order. 

The story begins with a farmer named Jacob Vaark, who is working to create a life in the new world, circa late 1600s.   He colonizes his farm with a variety of people: black, white, and Native American slaves; indentured servants; and a wife, purchased from England.  The main theme of the book is slavery in its various forms and how our country in its infancy turned to slavery for its growth. 

Lina is a Native American slave who is purchased by Jacob after her family is ravaged by smallpox.  She becomes the friend and confident of Mrs. Rebekkah Vaark, a woman in a new country, working to make a new life and escape the evils she found in England.  Vaark also purchases a young black slave named Florens, whose own mother asked Vaark to take her daughter away because she believed Vaark would offer her a better life.  Sorrow is a mysterious character who is a white orphan who lived at sea with her family, only to be shipwrecked and taken in by Vaark as another servant. 

The action of the plot arrives when a free black man, a blacksmith, works on Vaark’s grand new home, only to win the heart of Florens.  The blacksmith demonstrates a talent for healing, and when the Rebekkah falls ill with Smallpox, Florens undertakes a long and dangerous journey to find him.

Morrison addresses many powerful topics in this book, but the idea that slavery exists in many forms was the most resonant and applicable for me.  Not only were black people enslaved by our country during a particular time period, slavery extended to all skin colors.  Not only that, but slavery isn’t always the purchased labor of another human being.  It extends to the many ways we contract ourselves to others.  Such a broad understanding of slavery allows us in the modern era to conceive of how we might be slaves.

Are we slaves to our jobs? Have we signed on the bottom line and indentured ourselves to work that is beneath our own honor, or are we serving a worthless master, a false idol that has entrapped us?  Our hearts can be enslaved by passions that disable us from freedom in Christ. 

Never is the concept more powerful in the book but when Florens declares her love for the blacksmith, by telling him, “You alone own me.”  To the free black man, this statement is repellant. “Own yourself, woman,” he answers. “You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.”  He’s telling her that she isn’t free because she has enslaved herself to her emotions.  The blacksmith has become a false idol, above all else, and she loses the freedom to be herself.

Fortunately, it’s a short book, one of Morrison’s shortest.  If you haven’t read Morrison before, this might be a good place to start, especially if you pair it with her Nobel Prize winning Beloved, another book that addresses slavery in our country.

Guest blogger hubby here, chipping in as promised on the male perspective on Watership Down (aka “The Bunny Book”).  Overall, it is an enjoyable book that can appeal to both men and women, but it’s not a quick vacation read (which seems to be my usual standard for books these days).

If you want to feel manly while reading this book, get one without a giant bunny rabbit on the cover.  Or just rip off the cover (with your teeth). 

The book starts off slow, with way too much emphasis on flora, fauna, and bunny character development.  There is some intermittent action spliced in at the beginning.  For a while there it was touch and go as to whether I would keep reading.  Thankfully my sweet, loving wife egged me onwards.  She was spot on that the author seems to improve as the book went on, focusing more and more on something called “plot.”  

I enjoyed the stories he told, which were sort of like fables and bunny folklore.  Some even had a religious bent.  Some of the stories have Biblical allusions, from the perspective of the animal kingdom.  The bunnies prayed to the sun, “Frith,” so at least they were monotheistic.  And “the black rabbit” was Frith’s enemy (think “Basement Cat” for Amy’s usual readers). What was pretty cool is how it talks about the need for strong male leadership.  A warren cannot survive without a good leader.  Then, much like the church has elders and deacons, the “Chief Rabbit” had his supporting cast, the “owlsla” who were always looking for a good fight.  Plus, what guy doesn’t like to read about bucks conquering and mating with does! (hehe)  It’s PG rated, don’t worry.

I especially liked the glossary at the end which explains all the bunny words.  My favorite is “hrududu” (a vehicle with an engine). Amy (ever the linguist) didn’t even know the glossary was there and tried to figure out what all the words meant on her own. 

There are several battle scenes throughout the book with blood, guts, death, and covert operations.  If I have to explain why this is important, this post might not be for you (go back and read Amy’s post).  Without spoiling it though, the bunny war at the end is…epic.

Oh, and you’ll look at seagulls in a totally new light. Did you ever wonder what accent a seagull speaks with?  Read the book and find out.

This book was a wonderful surprise.  There were a lot of things I really liked about it, so much that it was one of those “can’t put it down” experiences.  I can’t speak to the movie that recently came out in theaters because I haven’t seen it yet (haven’t managed to con the male in this household to join me in watching it).

I’m a big fan of time travel stories, even though I generally don’t gravitate toward the sci-fi genre.  One of my favorite all time books is a little one called Einstein’s Dreams, which contains many shorts stories that explore different ideas about time. I also love Star Trek (yes, I admit it), and my favorite Trek movie is The Voyage Home (#4), which plays with time travel.   So, given the fact that I’ve read (and watched) my fair share of time travel fiction, I expected that the Time Traveler’s Wife wouldn’t be anything new.  My impression of it was a simple time travel plot playing second fiddle to a sappy romance.  But thankfully, I was wrong.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is Audrey Niffeneger’s first novel, which is exciting because there’s a lot of talent here that we can hope will continue to produce highly engrossing novels.  I haven’t read much on her biography, so I’m looking forward to learning more about what influenced her to create such a unique book.

What distinguishes this book from other time travel narratives is its creativity and smart plot organization.  Time travel shapes the entire narrative and continually affects everything within the story. It is primarily a book about time travel and secondarily a book about relationships, if you ask me (But my male readers might find the romance element a little bit too strong for their tastes).  The book would be more appropriately titled The Librarian Time Traveler, but with that title, only bookish people like myself would buy it. 

The plot sounds simple at first.  Henry DeTamble is a Chicago librarian, born in 1963, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder that causes him to uncontrollably time travel within his lifespan.  In his travels, he meets his wife.  The problem is, a man who travels to meet the same people throughout his lifetime is going to experience them at different stages in their relationship.  A 40 year old man, travelling to meet his wife at age 10, is a lot more complicated than a 30 year old man visiting his 25 year old wife.  This is problematic because Henry can’t take anything with him on his time travels, including clothing.  Imagine showing up buck naked in front of your spouse when he or she is in elementary school.  Challenging, and a bit disturbing (for both parties).

I found the quality of the prose to be excellent, at times poetic, and the characters were extremely complex and mysterious.  There’s quite a lot of witty dialogue in the text, and it asks a lot of you in comprehending the scenarios in which the time traveler is placed. There is a lot of philosophic inquiry into big questions such as free will, the existence of God, and the morality of the time traveler’s actions to survive. All this in what is being sold as a simple romance!

For my more sensitive readers, I need to be up front about the fact that this book is very raw at times, emotionally (get a hanky ready), sexually, and graphically.  There’s some brutality, which the reader is forced to reckon with. It’s a question of moral actions in the face of insane circumstances.  What would you do if you were naked and had no money? And there’s a lot of sex, mainly between the time traveler and his wife, which actually, somehow makes it better for me, since they’re married.  A brief tangent here: I’m liking this trend towards depicting married couples with good sex lives.  The film Julie and Julia did a great job with this.  Why should single people have all the fun? 

Did anyone else grab this book off the bestseller shelf? I’m thinking that the movie can’t match the book because certain ideas only work on the page, and I expect that this is one of them.  But, I’d be interested in hearing from the folks that watched the movie too.  And please tell me that I’m not alone in my time travel fascination!

I love the title for Lisa Harper’s new devotional study, A Perfect Mess: Why You Don’t Have to Worry About Being Good Enough for God.  This speaks directly to an issue that has been on my heart for the past several years. 

When I decided to start blogging, I prayed a lot about how I was going to focus the thing.  Of course, I wanted to talk about the things most important to me, God, the Bible, and books.  But I also wanted to talk about my own life, so the blog was personal and relatable. And I felt God impressing upon me the need to be very transparent, open and honest about the messes in my life, not just the ways that I’ve done things right.  He called me to be real, instead of polished (well, not in the grammar sense, of course!). 

I’m not sure how well I’ve stuck to my original calling. In the past few weeks, I’ve been sticking mainly to book reviews, and I hope to get back to more personal essays in the future. I’m taking a little bit of time away from those.  But hopefully, I’ll get a recharge during my summer break and come back with lots of new inspiration.

Anyway, back to the book (I think my book reviews are turning into personal essays).  The title drew me in, but I also liked that it was a study of the Psalms.  Each chapter reflects on a particular psalm, dealing with such issues as “Tumbling Toward Approval” with Psalm 139 and “Leaping over Legalism with Psalm 62.  The Psalms offer a wealth of real life living, messes and all, and we can learn a lot from these imperfect people and their relationships with the perfect God.

Harper is gifted at telling stories.  I was a bit disappointed in her ability to stay focused on the Psalm.  She often got derailed and tangential with her very charming stories that didn’t quite line up with what the Psalm was saying.  However, they offered great discussion material for a women’s group and even some food for thought along the general lines of the topic. 

Don’t approach the book as an in-depth study of the Psalms. Instead, see it as a collection of personal stories, loosely organized under a theme that happens to coincide slightly with a particular psalm.  I’d advise getting out your own Bible and reading the Psalm at the beginning of each chapter to do your own personal reflection, to make your own connections.  It’s what I ended up doing because Harper uses switches between unusual translations of the Bible (one of my pet peeves) and jumps around a bit through the Psalm. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the book, visit the publisher’s website.

This is going to be my last book review for a month.  I’m going to take a little break from the reviews as Dan and I take some vacation time. It doesn’t mean I won’t be blogging, but it probably won’t be as frequent.  Of course, I’m going to keep reading though. I’ve got a book a week goal to meet!

How’s this for a timely review?  Actually, I just re-read the book in time for watching the movie, so it’s not a coincidence. 

A couple years ago, this review would be much more controversial, I’m guessing.  But now days, the Christian community seems to have warmed up a bit to J.K. Rowling.  Perhaps they finally realized what serious readers were arguing all along, that Rowling was really on our side, which came out loud and clear with her final book, scripture verses, Christ figures, messianic type deliverance, and all.  I mean, really, at what point do you keep crying foul?

These books have delivered some of the most powerful Christian messages of all the books written in the past 50 years, and I’m finally going to get a little loud about it.  Frankly, this excites me. 

It’s time to share a little story.  It might rub some of you the wrong way, but I’ll risk it because I think it’s worth telling. 

When the first Harry Potter book came out, and the hype got started, I worried.  I didn’t want to buy the book to support it, if it was as evil as all the Christian talk show hosts were saying.  So,  I sat at Borders and read the entire thing in one sitting, enraptured.  I thought it was the most incredible thing since Narnia.  But, I wasn’t ready to decide just yet.  I did more research, and I prayed about it, of course.  When the movie came out, and I saw a great opportunity for Christ to be glorified, if Christians got on board.  But, I still wasn’t sure.  I mean, all these people said it was wrong.  So, I prayed about it.  And, I asked God if He’d only provide a way for me to go to the movie without having to buy a ticket, so I’d know he was okay with it. 

The next day, my best friend called me.  The strangest thing had happened.  Her boss gave her money to buy three tickets to the new Harry Potter movie to take two friends with her.  She wanted to take me and my husband.  (To make this even more strange, the boss never did anything like this before and never did anything like it after either.  God uses anyone, I suppose.  Oh, and the boss was an unbeliever.)

I don’t typically operate this way. I don’t do the charismatic “laying out the fleece” business (seems too much like putting God to the test), but this sort of request seemed practical to me.  Just like I didn’t want to support a book that didn’t glorify God with my money, I didn’t want to support a movie that way either.  But, God found a way around that for me. 

This isn’t meant to be a justification for you to read the books and see the movies.  That you’ll need to decide for yourselves, to pray about it, to read about them (here’s a good book from the Christian perspective that discusses the series).  Certainly don’t take my word for it, or rely on my experiences.  But, I wanted to show you my journey to accepting and even endorsing these books as a way to learn more about Jesus.  (One caveat to my endorsement is that I don’t think these books should be read by young kids, since they can be pretty dark. But it’s up to the parents to determine what their kids can handle, and how discerning their children can be.  In addition, the kids in these books tend to rebel against authority a lot, which doesn’t make for the greatest model for young kids, in my humble opinion.)

That was quite a prelude to a book review, but oh well, Harry Potter has a lot of baggage in the Christian world.  Let’s talk about my favorite book in the series, The Half Blood Prince.

Those familiar with the series might wonder why I like this book so much.  I don’t want to go into spoilers here, so this makes it difficult to discuss in detail. But I’ll try my best. 

As a general overview, the story is about Harry’s 6^th year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Lord Voldemort (the villain) is back, and everyone finally believes Harry about it.  Harry begins a series of private lessons with Hogwarts illustrious headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, to learn about Lord Voldemort’s past, in order to become better equipped to conquer him.  The title comes from a mysterious potions textbook that Harry borrows, with marginalia from one unknown “Half Blood Prince.” 

Why do I love this book?  This could be a spoiler, depending on how keen you are on predicting things, but at the end, there is one of the most powerful sacrifices, that mirror’s Christ’s sacrifice, since Aslan’s death for “unworthy” Edmund.   Christians should be rejoicing that this is in theaters right now.  But sadly, they’re missing a great opportunity for discussions with their non-believing friends.

I also love the mentoring relationship between Professor Dumbledore and Harry.  In the story, we have a very admirable man with wisdom and integrity who devotes himself to training up this young man, as a good father would.  It’s a beautiful relationship, and I can’t wait to see how it’s staged on screen.

And then there’s the Half Blood Prince and the unknown magic he teaches.  First, I love that the book focuses so much on the importance of marginalia, of writing in one’s books!  But, I also like that Harry struggles with being discerning in how much to trust what he reads.  There are a lot of lessons there for us about not accepting everything we read, to test it.

I could go on and on, but of course, I’ve already done that.  So, for now, I’m going to leave you to tell me what you think of these books, and perhaps the Half Blood Prince in particular. I’m planning on going to see the movie in the next couple days, but please let me know if you’ve seen the movie!  I’d like to hear your reviews!

Who knows how I’ve managed to miss this book for so long.  It’s just my sort of thing.  And I’m a little annoyed that nobody bothered to mention it to me before now!  But oh well, at least I’m caught up.  I finally read Watership Down, which was not at all about a naval battle, as the title made me assume.  It was all about bunnies.

Dan can’t figure out why anyone would want to read a 500 page novel about bunnies.  But they’re very complex creatures, or so I’ve come to learn after reading this book.  But I also realized how much we have to learn from reflecting on nature.

The Psalmist tells us “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (19:1).  All creation tells about its creator.  In the New Testament, we find out that we can’t claim ignorance about God, because all of nature is positively shouting all kinds of truth about him: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

So, why should it be surprising that a book about rabbits, faithful to the way rabbits live in nature, shouldn’t reveal a lot about ourselves and about our God?

I honestly don’t know much about this author, aside from the preface to the book.  I didn’t do my homework for this one, since our plans for an upcoming trip to Italy are taking up all my spare time.  But I do know that the author did a lot of research about rabbits, so I expect that his representation of rabbits and their daily lives was fairly accurate, minus all that talking stuff.

The plot is fairly simple, one that a child could understand.  Which is why the book could be mistaken for a Harry Potter length children’s book.  But it’s not merely a children’s book because adults have much to gain from reading it.

A group of rabbits break off from a warren to form their own warren but discover they have one huge problem: no female rabbits (does).  The entire book surrounds the conflict in finding does. 

Along the way, we learn about rabbit tradition and the different types of warrens that they encounter.  There are different leadership styles, ones that mirror human kind, of course.  And there are also admirable, sacrificial acts by brave leaders on behalf of the weaker members of the warren. 

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book was the introduction of rabbit language, terms that only rabbits use to describe things that only rabbits need to describe.  For example, the rabbits have a unique word for the time when they leave the rabbit holes to go outside.  It’s a word only a rabbit would need of course.  The words are gradually woven into the story and soon, you find yourself comfortable with the rabbit language. 

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but that’s next on the list, as soon as I coerce Dan to read the book.

Now if only there were an equivalent book about cats!

After reading Anna Quindlen’s How Reading Changed my Life, I knew I’d found a writer whose style was a rare treasure.  So, after a couple commenters clued me into her most favorite novel, One True Thing, I checked it out to explore her fiction.  And I’m happy to report that her fiction is just as fabulous as her prose (not always the case, you know).

I didn’t bother to read the back cover material, so I didn’t realize the book was about dying.  I probably wouldn’t have chosen it for a summer read if I’d have known that.  But I’m happy that I read it in ignorance because it was well worth it, even in the summertime.

Ellen Gulden is a successful career woman, living the single life in the city, when she learns that her mother is dying of cancer.  Ellen’s mother has always been a Martha Stewart type, a bedrock of the home, capable and resourceful, always making the home a happy and warm place.  And now, she needs Ellen to nurse her through her final days.  And Ellen’s father, the tenured English professor, distances himself from the women and buries himself in his career.  Ellen rebuilds her relationship with her mother, learns to focus on someone other than herself, and also struggles to gain acceptance from her cool and remote father.

So, while the book is technically about dying, it’s about a lot more.  For me, it was mostly about the relationship between a mother and a daughter, about the generational gap, and about finally growing up.  And for a book that marches onward toward death, it’s surprisingly joyful and light.  But we have Ellen’s mother to thank for that.

I appreciate Quindlen’s thoughtful prose.  She’s very reflective, something she draws from her nonfiction and journalistic training, no doubt, and her fiction is better for it.  I also love the literature references woven into her book.  Her love for books continually comes across in her writing, whether she’s explicitly referencing them or not.

 Ah, the joys of diving into a long Victorian novel.  I splurged, as I must on occasion, and read Elizabeth Gaskell’s romantic novel Wives and Daughters.  At 644 pages, it was a bit of a sacrifice for my book a week reading goal, but it was well worth the effort.

I’ve never read anything by Gaskell before, so I was excited to meet a new female Victorian writer, hoping that I’d find a new author to read en masse.  And, thank goodness, I wasn’t disappointed.

Wives and Daughters has a slower pace than Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters’ books.  I compare it more with George Elliot’s work in its concern with character development and particularly the importance of the relationships between the characters.  In this book, as the title suggests, the relationships in focus are those of daughters (step-daughters, to be precise), step-mothers, and wives. 

Molly Gibson is the fresh faced, doe eyed main character, who is almost TOO good.  I admit, I had a hard time believing how good she was, just like Beth in Little Women…a little too good.  But in Alcott’s book, Beth isn’t the main character. Rebellious and badly behaved Joe is the main character, so Beth’s goodness is a little easier to take.  Same goes for Pride and Prejudice.  Jane is a little too good as well, but we have Lizzy to make it all even.But, Molly’s strength lies in her faithfulness and devotion to those she loves.  She’s not out to impress anyone, and she’s genuine.  Those are certainly amiable qualities.

Molly lives with her widowed father, the local doctor.  I loved all the details about country medicine, so that was a wonderful surprise in the book.  Molly has that Heidi-like country freshness about her.  She and her father are thick as thieves, and Molly roams wild about the countryside.

The plot gets going when Molly’s father decides to marry, mainly for Molly’s sake.  The woman he chooses is good on paper, but in reality, isn’t necessarily the best choice.  Clare is selfish and bossy and much more immature than the girl she is supposed to be raising, an irony that Gaskill continually points out.

Of course, there are love interests, in the form of Roger Hamley, a member of the wealthy landowning class, far removed from Molly’s prospect in marriage.  But, of course, there are 600 pages worth of experiences that throw these lovebirds in each other’s way, with the complication that Roger falls in love with Clare’s daughter (Molly’s stepsister) Cynthia. 

Imagine my surprise when I got to the end of the book to find it uncompleted.  Gaskill died before she finished it, and nobody bothered to tell me this.  I suppose I could have learned it if I’d have bothered to read the introduction, but sometimes, those spoil the endings. 

Other editions have added alternate endings.  And we pretty much know where the story is going.  Gaskill has wrapped up most of the plot lines.

However, that was a new experience for me, one that I’m not sure I want to repeat unawares.  I accidentally woke Dan up with my protestations when I was up late finishing the book and came upon that “ending.” 

Don’t let that dissuade you from reading the book though, especially if there’s one with the completed ending.  I also hear that there are some good BBC versions out there, for those of you who enjoy watching period dramas.  I’m assuming that the BBC added an ending to avoid annoying their viewers.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Housekeeping for a long time, but I’ve held off reading it because it was a rare jewel, one that couldn’t be replaced anytime soon. 

Marilynne Robinson doesn’t write novels very often.  But when she does, the world takes notice.  Her first novel, Housekeeping, earned her a Pen/Hemingway Award, and her second, Gilead, won the Pulitzer.  I reviewed her most recent book, Home, and you can read my thoughts on it here.  Home was a finalist for the National Book Award, which is a pretty decent award as well.

Housekeeping was published in 1980, and the world had to wait 24 years for her next book.  But maybe it takes that long to write a book that wins the Pulitzer.  Thankfully, Home came along only four years later, because I’m not sure I could hold out another quarter century. 

Housekeeping is a deceptively short book.  Of course, I forgot my own statement: “Even though they are very short books, they’ll likely take you longer than most Victorian novels to read.”  And I picked it up a couple days before my book group met to discuss it.  At 219 pages, with such a “domestic” topic, it looks lightweight.  But that’s part of Robinson’s charm.  She takes what is simple and makes it complex.  She shows you the depth of everyday things, the complexity and the sacredness of the ordinary. 

The plot is very simple.  Two orphaned girls live with their grandmother, until their grandmother dies.  Two elderly, spinster great aunts take up housekeeping to watch over the girls, but then leave the girls under the care of their aunt (their mother’s sister), who is mentally unbalanced and a transient.

At its most basic level, the story is about different women, taking care of a home, and what it means to live in a place and “keep up appearances.”  But of course, with Robinson, the story is about so much more.  Housekeeping is about memory, about coping, about sanity, and sanctity. 

The Biblical allusions are brief, but they also offer some of the most powerful metaphors in the story.  Robinson teases us with deep theological questions, rooted in everyday circumstances.  Read the book quickly, skim, and you miss these profound inquires.

The language also sets the book apart from many others.  Each sentence is carefully crafted, as is the case with all her books, so as to seem almost poetic and very purposeful.  And when the characters are struggling with sanity, the style mirrors their mental shifts as well.

So even though I’m sad to have completed all of Robinson’s novels, I’m excited to pick them up again and find all the hidden treasures that I missed the first time through.  I’ve found that each reading brings out many new insights, the hallmark of a book with a lot of rewards to offer.

If I recommend any books that you’d like to purchase, consider buying them through Amazon using the links on my site, so I get a percentage of the purchase price back to buy more books to review!