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Housekeeping: A Novel Audiobook
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(3.00) - 14,436 listener ratings
Publisher Description
An unabridged audio edition of this classic work on the 25th anniversary of its first publication
A modern classic, 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, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, 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.
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“Housekeeping speaks eloquently of displacement, loss, and longing.Becket Royce has a friendly, inviting voice well-suited to Ruth’s long andthoughtful narrations of the story, though she’s equally good at creating thevoices of Sylvie and Lucille, as well as incidental characters. Robinson’s useof language is often challenging and always beautiful; some sentences brim withmeaning and metaphoric potential…But the rewards of listening slowly or rereadingprovocative passages are worth it.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn’t want to miss any pleasure it might yield.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield.
— Le Anne Schreiber, The New York Times Book Review -
Here's a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt.
— Anatole Broyard, The New York Times -
I found myself reading slowly, than more slowly—this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight.
— Doris Lessing -
“Extraordinary…Marilynne Robinson uses the language so exquisitely…Every sentence is a wonderful sentence, made just right…Housekeeping proves that fine fiction is still being written.”
— Washington Post Book World -
“A stunningly moving story about a devastated family…Robinson infuses the tale with offbeat humor, but the enduring impact of this book lies in its pervasive understanding of tragedy.”
— People -
“Robinson’s ability to show us the power of unconventional love and the lasting, although invisible, bonds between members of such an eccentric and apparently feckless family makes us smile with pleasure throughout the novel.”
— Miami Herald -
“Housekeeping is a haunting dream of a story told in a language as sharp and clear as light and air and water.”
— Walker Percy, New York Times bestselling author -
“The richness and variety and the peculiarity of tone Marilynne Robinson sustains are masterful; I found the characters absorbing and disturbing.”
— Mary Gordon, New York Times bestselling author -
“Robinson literally seems to stretch her characters with insight she must have stockpiled for years…What Ruth says of Sylvie is true of Robinson: ‘She undertook the most ordinary things’ and ‘made them seem…remarkable.’”
— Ms. Magazine
Awards
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Winner of the 1982 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award
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A 1982 New York Times Best Book for Fiction
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A 1982 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Fiction
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Among shortlisted titles for Pulitzer Prize - Finalist, 1982
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A 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
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One of Time Magazine's Best 100 English-Language Novels from 1923–2005
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Nominated for Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award - Nominee, 1982
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About Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is the author of numerous books, including Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack, a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.”
About Becket Royce
Becket Royce is an accomplished actor whose television credits include I’ll Be Home for Christmas, The Kennedys of Massachusetts, As the World Turns, One Life to Live, and numerous commercials. She has performed onstage in New York and regionally in the plays The Male Animal, Macbeth, and many others.