New reads:

This week, I'm reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. It's our book club pick for this month. I've almost finished it. It's a quick read. But here's the thing: I'm not really into it.

Plot summary goes a little something like this:

"A modern classic that brilliantly portrays the impermanence of all things, especially beauty and happiness, 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, which is 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 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."

It's a somewhat interesting story. And the writing is really beautiful but I feel like it's trying too hard to be something. I'm not sure what. But I struggled with it. I haven't ever read anything by Robinson before but some people have been suggesting that I give Gilead, another of her novels, a try. I have reservations. I'm worried that it will be Housekeeping 2.0. Have you read it? What are your thoughts?