About Housekeeping

Housekeeping was published in 1980. In 1982, it received the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Faulkner fiction award nomination, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. The novel became a national bestseller.

Housekeeping is set in the fictional isolated Idaho mountain community, Fingerbone. It is the story of Ruth and Lucille, sisters who, after the death of their mother, are raised by various female family members. Acclaimed for its accomplished and evocative language, Housekeeping is widely regarded as one of the most significant contemporary novels about the lives of women in the American west.

In 1987 Housekeeping was made into a film directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Christine Lahti. It is available on video at Boise Public Library.

About the Author

Marilynne Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho. She took a BA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of Washington. She has taught at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

In 1998 she was awarded an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living stipend. This $250,000 award is presented at $50,000 a year for five years, to allow recipients to devote their time solely to writing.

Housekeeping, 1980, FICTION ROBINSO M

Mother Country: Britain, the Nuclear State, and Nuclear Pollution, 1989, 363.179 ROBINSO

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, 1998, 973.92 ROBINSO

Biographical & Critical Sources

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, volume 25, pages 386-389, R OV 809 C767
• Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, volume 80, pages 369-372, R OV 928 CONTEMP

Articles by and about Marilynne Robinson can be found in EBSCOhost Masterfile and Newspaper Source, one of the subscription databases that can be accessed through the library’s internet homepage, www.boisepubliclibrary.org.

What if Everybody Read the Same Book?

The College of Cardinals has chosen "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson to be the first book in the "What if Everybody Read the Same Book?" project in Idaho. The group hopes this will become an annual event.

(Paula) Fisher was among more than 100 people who suggested books. Her pick, "Housekeeping," is an achingly beautiful novel by Marilynne Robinson, set in the author's native Sandpoint.

It is accessible enough to be on the Boise School District's list of books for 10th-grade English classes. Its descriptions of Sandpoint -- "Fingerbone" in the book -- are crisp and moving. The book is topical, exploring issues of mental illness, conformity and family dysfunction. Though it won major awards after it was published in 1980 -- including the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and a Pulitzer Prize nomination -- our guess is many Idahoans have not read "Housekeeping."

And for those who have, we hope the chance to reread the book and have a community discussion about it at the Log Cabin Literary Center's BookFest in September will motivate them to take another look. . . . . . Robinson has agreed to travel to Boise from her home in Massachusetts to read from her work and help us celebrate the effort to build a community of minds.

Fisher suggested "Housekeeping" because it encouraged her to be tolerant of different lifestyles. "It shows you how different people really are, and once you get into their minds and their point of view, it makes you empathetic with the people around you."

- Return to Read the Same Book main page -

Last Updated: 07/27/2006