Most small American towns have at least one: the "odd" house that everyone knows and gossips about, the old place going to seed on the outside while a hidden, perhaps unimaginable life transpires behind drawn shades or yellowing lace curtains. A home haunted by its occupants fascinates the neighbors and many, many writers; the phenomenon crops up from Poe to Faulkner to Harper Lee and beyond. That last category now includes Author Marilynne Robinson. Her unsettling first novel [Housekeeping] deals with the fall of yet another house, but from an unusual vantage. The story is told by an insider who helps pull down the roof.

Ruth Stone and her younger sister Lucille are deposited as small children at their grandmother's house in Fingerbone, an isolated community….

When their grandmother dies, care of the castaway daughters eventually falls to their Aunt Sylvie….

Lucille finally senses how peculiar the three...