While reading it I thought it merely referred to Sylvie’s attempts to set up and keep a home (cooking, cleaning, etc.), and this is referred to often enough both before Sylvie comes along and after.

However, I’ve been looking at several zoning ordinances here in the U.S. and have been surprised at how often they define a “single-famly home” as one in which a “family” does its “housekeeping.” And, interestingly, many go further to say that this means a family doing its own cleaning and cooking.

When litigated, these ordinances are shown to have been used to keep non-traditional “families” out of these zoned areas. They really are used to create a certain kind of community with certain types of families and “values.”

The court and the family law system is an absent presence in this book. The threat of state interference is palpable, and the way Sylvie raises these children is far from traditional. I’m not saying that the state would have used the zoning ordinance to take the children away (that would not be possible, I don’t think, because the zoning ordinance just means you cannot reside there – another idea in the book). I’m probably way off here, but when family law comes in contact with zoning ordinances, “housekeeping” is one of those strange words that pops up.

This was such a good book! Still on my mind.

That’s an embarassing mistake for a publishing house.

I also have Gilead waiting, but I find the subject slightly off-putting.

Question regarding the book by Richard Yates a few posts back: is ‘lonelines’ spelled with one s on the actual cover?

I read Gilead earlier this year and should have put it down early as I did not engage one bit with the character. The voice was charming, the verbage wonderful, but the character, in my eyes, downright boring. One of the last people, to use something hackneyed, that I would want to invite round for dinner (so it’s carrots for him ;-) ).

I also blame that book for being so dull that, after putting it down, I embarked upon a six week barren spell where I could not read; I just did not want to. It scabbed up, the wound healed, and I’m reading again.

I have no idea what the carrots reference was about. Perhaps he went on and on about them. What shocks me most was that it was only two years ago I read Gilead! It feels like a lifetime since. Fair enough I’ve read 163 books fully, with plenty more abandoned in the time since. But still…!