Found this yesterday in the book section of a charity shop.
A modern classic that "Brilliantly Portrays the impermanence of all things, especially beatuy and happiness" (Paul Gray, Time).

This book is a winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award.

Lucille and Ruthie, adolescents, are practically left to raise themselves after their mother commits suicide, their grandmother dies, and their two maiden aunts decide raising two girls is going to put them into an early grave. Enter Aunt Sylvie, who is more than a bit south of off-center. She is a dreamer, a lifetime drifter who sleeps fully clothed down to her shoes, and a housekeeper who fills rooms with stacks of old newspapers, tin cans, brown paper bags, cats, dead leaves and mildewed sofa cushions. She has no concept of conformity and no sense of being seen as odd. Lucille is old enough to feel embarrassment, Ruthie young enough to feel the magic.
The reader is invited to peer into the soul of a drifter and learn that homelessness can sometimes be a choice.

Housekeeping starts out quietly. At first it seems to be a story about a family of women -- women who have lost their men, girls who have lost their mother, mothers whose daughters have left them, and maiden aunts who find themselves over their heads trying to care for two young orphaned girls -- an interesting, well-told, quiet story. But actually the beginning is just the innocuous bit of lawn leading into a labyrinth of shrubbery that takes you through dark tunnels of overgrowth and around bottomless ponds and then winds back on itself over and over. Robinson’s writing style and presentation develops parallel to the characters and setting. It grows with the book. She is profound, vibrant, insightful, philosophical – her writing is often like poetry. Her style is, to me, similar to that of Annie Dillard. It’s deep and rich and to be savored.
This book was a spectacular, thift-shop find.

Currently offered on BookObsessed - a book relay site.

EDITED to add: book accepted by crimson-tide in Australia. Will be on its way in a few days.

A wish list book - fantastic! Thanks very much hotflash.