Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Dear blog, right before school started I finished reading the novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. It was a very good and interesting book, but in certain parts of the book I felt like the author was just rambling and repeating herself. Anyway, this book is about two sisters named Ruth and Lucille. At first they lived with their mother, but she did not pay much attention to them. She was always quiet, but these girls loved their mom. One day her mom decided that they were going to visit grandma. Their neighbor let them borrow her car. Once they arrived at grandma's house, the mom left the girls in the porch while she went away. The mom left to commit suicide, leaving her two daughters without parents. The grandmother took custody of them and took care of them until she died. Then their great aunts take custody of them, but they are too old to be caring for two young, energetic girls. So they decided to contact Sylvie; she is the two girls' aunt. Sylvie is younger, but she is mentally unbalanced. She also struggled to keep up with the girls. Sometimes the girls would not come home and she wouldn't even notice. She did not clean the house, she let everything get dirty; she also accumulated stacks of magazines and newspapers. Sylvie liked to eat in the dark while telling stories. Lucille was a bit more worried about their society status, she didn't like not having enough money to buy nice clothing, and she didn't like the way aunt Sylvie behaved. Lucille decided to move out of the house leaving her sister to care for Sylvie. Lucille went to live with one of her teachers and started hanging out with girls of a higher social class. One day Sylvie and Ruth went out to the lake and the next day rode on a train. The people from the town did not like it, and the judge threatned to take Ruth away from Sylvie. She did not want to let her go, so she cleaned  the house got rid of all the magazines and newspapers and started cooking better food. Sylvie was still scared that they might not change their mind, so in the middle of the night they caught the house on fire and ran away. Sylvie and Ruth always wondered what had became of Lucille's life.
XOXO
Dale!