I really struggled through this book. As someone with a strong preference for plot-driven books over character-driven books, if I'm reading one of the latter, I need to really care about at least some of the characters, and I just couldn't get there with Housekeeping. I didn't find any of them particularly sympathetic or substantive - Sylvie was mildly interesting due to her extreme non-conformity, but that's where it ended, and there really was no way I could relate to her. Robinson showed flashes of excellent prose here and there, but there were plenty of times that it simply came across as pretentious or contrived, so that didn't rescue the experience either.