An adieu and last revieu
by Ruth Raymond

Since Lies #2, I've had the pleasure of providing reviews of books written by Canadians. In this column, you've read my comments on titles by Dennis Bolen, Lynnette D'anna, Sheri-D Wilson, Fred Wah, Renee Rodin, and more. You've also read about the International Three-day Novel Contest, which I continue to enter (this September will be year six!). And you've read about the other Ruth Raymond, who I found by accident on the Internet, and who lives in Rome, Italy.

An update on the Ruth story: you may remember that she is also a writer, shares my taste in music, theater, books, and favorite color (British racing green). Well, we finally met. Other Ruth spent four days at my place about a month ago, and after a year-and-a-half of nurturing an e-mail friendship, we found that we became even closer in person. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it's like finding a long lost sister. In September, I'll be visiting her in Rome.

Now, as Lies winds down and becomes but another past accomplishment in our editor's portfolio, I'd like to bid y'all a fond farewell and encourage you to buy Canadian (hey, one American dollar buys about twenty-three of ours now anyway).

I'll leave you with one last review. This time, it's not Canadian though--it's by Marilynne Robinson, who teaches at the University of Iowa Writer's Program. It's not even a new book; it was published in 1980 and went into second printing in 1997. But this is the last issue of Lies, which means you can't write in and complain that the Canadian book reviewer covered an American novel that's been on the stands for eleven years, right?

Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson
The Noonday Press
ISBN 0-374-17313-3

Housekeeping begins with the simple sentence, "My name is Ruth." You can see why it got my attention right away. From there, the author provides an absolutely delightful story about Ruth and her younger sister Lucille.

The two are abandoned on their grandmother's doorstep, when their mother drives away and plunges, car and all, into the lake. This is the same lake that claimed the girls' grandfather in a spectacular train derailment many years before.

The grandmother takes care of the girls. When she dies, two bumbling great-aunties move in. When they realize that they can't cope, Silvie takes on the household. Eccentric, disturbing, but likable, Silvie is the dead mother's sister. She's a drifter, and taking up housekeeping is unfamiliar and disturbing to her. She still sleeps on top of the covers, with her shoes under the pillow. She seems out of place in a house.

The book is about relationships, loss, survival, and the undercurrent of transience. Robinson makes the characters extremely vivid; they are touching and unsettling, but presented with enough humor to soften the disturbing edges.

As for Robinson's style, this is one of those books that you want to devour, but find that you must absorb slowly. Every sentence is fat, overstuffed, full of flavor. There's no filler, no artificial ingredients; only pure, distilled writing. It is an exquisitely crafted novel.

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