Housekeeping (1980)

The lake beside Fingerbone holds family history as well as the reflection of the town. For Ruth and Lucille, the house and their aunt Sylvie's unsettled habits make shelter an increasingly complicated idea. Robinson's descriptions attend to water, light and the porous boundary between domestic space and the surrounding world. The pace is contemplative, and suicide and abandonment underlie its beauty; this is a landscape of grief as much as revelation.