Loss, obliteration, longing and transcience constitute the recurring theme of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. It gives it's readers a feeling very similar to the kind that the lake in the book gives to the residents of Fingerbone: it is the kind of existence whose mundane presence can be easily overlooked but has so much sunken at the bottom that it builds itself up to become a part of people's everyday life, as a reminder, an alarm, a time bomb -- in the sense that it carries memories, reflections and truths which are sober enough to be