Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition) Audiobook By Marilynne Robinson cover art

Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)

A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)

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Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)

By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
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"[Narrator Therese] Plummer's talented performance is both illuminating and poignant." (AudioFile Magazine)

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award

Fortieth Anniversary Edition

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

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 transience.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©1980 Marilynne Robinson (P)2020 Macmillan Audio Family Life Genre Fiction Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield." (The New York Times Book Review)

"These tiny little titles are pocket-sized, shiny, and gorgeous. Featuring authors like Marilynne Robinson and Jeffery Eugenides, they're the kind of books you'll have to own the entire set of, because they're just that pretty - and it happens to be lovely that they fit in just about every bag you own. You can't be caught anywhere without a book, of course." (Julia Seales, Bustle)

"Our books today are the neatest little things you’ll see in the rest of 2015’s book-year: a set of Modern Classics from Picador Press, done up in a neat bow!" (Open Letters Monthly)

Beautiful Prose • Gorgeous Imagery • Perfect Narrator Voice • Literary Fiction • Wonderful Descriptions
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For me, the narrator read too fast, as if she was in a hurry to get to the end. In doing so, she diminishes the allegorical power of the lake and river, and the deliciousness of language, of the woods and flowers and birds, sky and water.

Narrator reads too fast

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The writing is gorgeous, the imagery is amazing, and the symbolism is what elevates it to literary fiction. I’m not sorry I read it, but the meandering plot was frustrating, and the resolution was not what I was hoping for.

The narrator’s voice is perfect, but she had a few very annoying mispronunciations, including “CAT-sup” instead of ketchup. Who in the world says “catsup,” even if that spelling is used.

I appreciated it, but I didn’t like it

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To my delight, the audio version is a wonderful accompaniment to the novel. Glorious distilled prose tells the story of Ruthie, Lucille and their aunt, Silvie. While set in the last century in an austere and rugged setting, the threads of loss and heritage and resilience are vibrant today. Beautiful.

Elegant, haunting

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I listened to this during a long drive it kept me awake and interested. There are some points during the book that seem a little redundant where it almost goes into too much detail and the story becomes stagnant but it picks back up and the ending was good.

Overall not bad

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I'm glad I listened to this wonderful book. My two sisters and I were left by our mother at an age too early for two little girls and a baby to be left by their mother.As a result of this I learned no other woman would be a mother to us.We never knew where or who we would be with next.I love Housekeeping because Marilynn Robinson hit the nail on the head...

Everything

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Certainly a book for people who don’t quite fit into the conventional world. But nature is also main character here and I’m ready to drive to Idaho tomorrow to experience it.

A small and perfect novel

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A wonderful book about the balance between order and chaos. It motivated me to start making my bed!

Beautiful writing

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The text is rich and remarkable in its descriptors and attention to detail.
The beginning is slow, but as the story unfolds, the narrator’s inner dialogue explores so many of life’s imponderables. I was drawn into her world in fascination. Wonderful to listen to!

Beautiful language

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this story was a bit slow and seemed plotless for a while. but the metaphoric language could be beautiful.

Interesting characters

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Pitch perfect reader of pitch perfect prose. So glad I finally got to this book. And the interview with MR at the end is a wonderful treat!

The magnificent language , the metaphors

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