Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1982. In 2005, she was awarded the Pulitzer for her second novel, Gilead. In this seminar we will read both novels; a subsequent seminar will focus on Robinson’s third and fourth novels, which take up and expand upon the story told in Gilead. All novels are concerned with questions of family, home, memory, and the often fraught nature of human relationships. In Housekeeping, two sisters struggle towards maturity amidst tragic and complicated family circumstances. Set in a hauntingly atmospheric Idaho town, Robinson’s lyrical story blends the mundane and the mythical and confronts us with both the beauty and the difficulty of love. Gilead takes the form of journal entries, written by…