Customer Comments

I read this as part of a children's literature course in college several years ago and it has become one of my favorite books. Despite the simple storytelling, I can't think of many better examples of structure and plot-pacing. And protagonist Sal is unforgettable.

Through the coming-of-age reflections of the narrator, Ruthie, Marilynne Robinson explores the idea that family never dies. Instead of the usual skeletons in the closet, however, Ruthie’s dead family members are more like ghosts that not only haunt the nearby lake, but also leave bits of their memory and even themselves in living relatives. While Robinson’s main characters are “outsiders” and “transients,” she constructs their motives and personalities so well that one cannot help but understand that their choices are fated as surely as the blood that runs through their veins. A reviewer called Housekeeping a “modern-day classic” and I have to agree in that wading through her long, complicated sentences was reminiscent of high school required reading. But I hasten to add that this is not a bad thing. As with the reading of most classics, the occasionally necessary re-reading of paragraphs and the slower pace of processing needed to fully ingest the author’s craft was, unequivocally, worth it.

Michela Wrong's journalistic style aids in making this account of Congolese dictator Mobutu's rise and fall not only readable, but bearable. Wrong does not shy away from revealing the horrors of his dictatorship, but ultimately paints Mobutu as more of a tragically flawed human than a monster despite the comparison to Joseph Conrad's truly monsterous Kurtz. Wrong establishes her perspective on the "Dark Continent" in her explanation of the novel's title, making it clear that "darkness" refers to corrupt man, not the continent itself.