What is the author's style in Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson?

This novel is comprised of eleven unnamed chapters, each approximately thirteen to fifteen pages long, with two longer chapters that are twenty-eight and thirty-three pages, and a shorter eleven-page final chapter.

The plot novel has no subplots. The narrator tells the story in chronological order as a remembrance, but she uses flashbacks to revisit and re-examine events in her life as the narrative builds detail. The narrator admits to telling a story, and she frequently digresses to say that her sister would tell it differently, or that another character might have another explanation for some event.

When the events leading up to her present life are all unfolded, the narrator examines them one last time and imagines a reunion with her sister that she longs for but must remind herself will never happen.