4-Week: Craft Lessons From Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

This is a dedicated study of Marilynne Robinson's 1980 novel about two orphaned sisters growing up under the unconventional guidance of their estranged aunt. Our deep reading of Robinson's impeccable short novel will center her craft choices, touching on all seven elements of fiction—plot, character, setting, point of view, style / voice, theme, and symbolism—while paying particular attention to the book's narrator and language. And while we appreciate the novel's structure and slow crescendo toward climax, all writers, fictionists and memoirists, narrative and non-narrative writers alike, will find much to learn from Robinson's masterpiece.