At the beginning of Marilynne Robinson's outstanding first novel [Housekeeping], set in a far-Western town by a glacial lake, domesticity is endowed with an almost spiritual aura. After the death of their father (the train he was on plunged into the lake), his three adolescent daughters cleave like infants to their mother, who encircles them with a kind of elemental warmth. The stability of their home is palpable: the girls sleep on starched sheets under layers of quilts, their mother makes cakes and apple sauce on rainy days and in summer mixes a pot-pourri of blown rose petals and spices. But the novel sets out to subvert this kind of tranquility, exposing it as illusory, and housekeeping subsequently becomes a gesture of despair.

Years later, when Helen, one of the daughters, returns home to Fingerbone to commit suicide by driving her car into the lake, her mother tries...