Robinson says that when writing Housekeeping, water was on her mind as "a very good metaphor for consciousness, for the artificial accidental surface of consciousness and then everything behind and beyond it." How does this apply to the novel, especially with respect to Sylvie? Robinson has served as visiting professor and writer-in-residence at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. In 1991, she joined the faculty of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently resides in Iowa, where she teaches and writes. An Interview with Marilynne Robinson Fay, Interviewed by Sarah (2008). "Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction No. 198". The Paris Review. Vol.Fall 2008, no.186. ISSN 0031-2037 . Retrieved 2019-01-03. Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it,” writes Robinson, and like a wake in water, we follow after, telling ourselves stories to try and reclaim what we’ve lost.

But it was the apple tree that seemed particularly charged in Robinson’s presence. More trunk than tree, barren except for a single branch with a few withered attempts at fruit, its shadow was barely longer than hers. As a writer, Robinson is a direct descendant of Frost, carrying on his tradition of careful, democratic observations of this country’s landscapes and its people, perpetually keeping one eye on the eternal and the other on the everyday. As a Calvinist, she has spent a lot of her life thinking about apple trees. Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction No. 198". The Paris Review. Fall 2008 . Retrieved 2021-06-16.

You might also like

If you were the child-welfare officer or sheriff, what would you have done with Ruthie and Lucille? How would you defend your decision?

Sandra Hutchison (15 February 2015). "Marilynne Robinson". Sandra Hutchison . Retrieved 2019-01-03.

Edmund Foster – Ruth and Lucille's grandfather, Sylvia's husband, and Molley, Helena, and Sylvie's father ("papa"). He was raised in a house, dug out of the ground, in the "Middle West". He is consumed with wanderlust and a desire to paint mountains. This desire leads to his job on a train and the related events form the foundation of the novel. Working on the train, he is killed in its crash into the lake of Fingerbone. But if people could disappear as if by magic—over a cliff, into a lake—then might they not somehow just as suddenly be returned to us?