Absalom, Absalom!

By William Faulkner

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Family drama and the legacy of slavery haunt this epic tale of an enigmatic stranger in Jefferson, Mississippi—from one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century. 

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
 
Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner’s epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, a man who comes to the South in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9780679641438

William Faulkner

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all American novelists and short-story writers.  His other works include the novels The Sound and the Fury, The Reivers, and Sanctuary.  He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and in 1949 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews for Absalom, Absalom!

[danielstj · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Yet another Faulkner book that, although it has some good parts, isn't overtly remarkable.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 1981-01-12)It is sometimes uncomfortable reading things from other eras - for example I´m a big fan of William Faulkner who was in many ways ahead of the curve on race for his day - if the average KKK member had been more into modernist avant-garde fiction than I imagine they were, he´d probably be having crosses burned outside his house left right and centre - but definitely a bit weird about women at times.Or take for example Dante - who as a medieval Catholic believed in all kinds of things I´m deeply opposed to (though it´s interesting the parts in Inferno when he expresses more sympathy are often precisely the parts a modern reader might also have more difficulty accepting the person´s fate - compare how sympathetically he views the homosexuals or suicides compared to the corrupt priests orthe violent for example - but like everyone at that time he just accepted certain things as fact that nowadays we don´t, namely that God would condemn them all to hell.But in many ways it´s precisely reading thing written by people who believe in values or have experienced a world totally different from our own that makes it worthwhile. It broadens our understanding of the human condition and how people react to it, helps us see what´s constant and what is more fluctuating and impermanent.Values are very much impermanent - they can´t be shown logically, they can´t be proved empirically, and are just shifting products of social circumstances. People can only be judged by the standards of their own time. Who knows what any of us would think or feel had we grown up in a different time with different customs and more limited sources of information? Realising this is in fact the key to genuine tolerance rather than the enforced "I find this offensive so let´s ban it kind" of "tolerance" which is not what the author is in fact arguing for.The fact that some people on the left, and note I say "some", do feel that their own values are permanent and can be applied to all eras, is for me just nostalgia for religion, a form of existential angst. People resist the idea that their values are not particularly solid, it´s part of rejecting our human freedom and our capacity for self-defense and free-thought. In this some of the more rigid PC thinkers show a lot in common with religious conservatives on the right, who also mistake their rather modern literalist interpretations of religion for something eternal and unchanging. In both cases it´s quirk of personality rather than a properly though out philosophical position I feel. It´s fascinating how religiosity, ease of offence, literal mindedness and humourlessness so often go together as a form of syndrome, making me wonder if there is some underlying cognitive variable, such as intolerance towards ambiguity or inability to grasp metaphorical thought....Meanwhile, the rest of us will carry on reading things from other, less "enlightened" times (and how will our own look to "those who will consider this time ancient", as Dante put it?), reading critically when necessary and with some discomfort, but still reading and learning and gaining enjoyment from them.....

[margaretfield · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's Faulkner

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hoewel ik Faulkner heel erg waardeer, is dit boek me een brug te ver: de constructie van het verhaal vraagt gewoon teveel van de lezer; dit is alleen nog genietbaar voor literatuurwetenschappers. Dat neemt niet weg dat enkele passages zelf van een ongelofelijk hoog niveau zijn.

[headisdead · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Incredible, stylistically.

[lecteurcanadien · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In my top ten !

[maxernst11 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hoewel ik Faulkner heel erg waardeer, is dit boek me een brug te ver: de constructie van het verhaal vraagt gewoon teveel van de lezer; dit is alleen nog genietbaar voor literatuurwetenschappers. Dat neemt niet weg dat enkele passages zelf van een ongelofelijk hoog niveau zijn.

[drsabs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Faulkner tells this story of a driven man and his family as of 1910 but the beginnings go back to the antebellum period and the main focus is around the Civil War years. There are several different narrative voices and the story does not follow a clear timeline. Rather, it seems to follow the story as told to or learned by the master narrator, Quentin Compson, the grandson of a Civil War general who was friendly to the main character, Thomas Sutpen, and to whom Sutpen shared his confidences. Sutpen achieves great success but is brought down by his tragic flaw-- racism.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Memory. That is remembering the past, your family, the culture of family and place. That is in and of the essence of this memorable novel. We find it in the wisteria:"Do you mark how the wistaria, sun-impacted on this wall here, distills and penetrates this room as though (light-unimpeded) by secret and attritive progress from mote to mote of obscurity's myriad components? That is the substance of remembering---sense, sight, and smell" (p 115)This is a story of a man, Thomas Sutpen, and other men and women whose lives formed the history of a place and a time--a sometimes dynasty, as told by several narrators including Miss Rosa Coldfield and Quentin Compson (whom you may remember from The Sound and the Fury).The memory of the events surrounding the ferociousness of Thomas Sutpen is told through fabulous stories, conjecture, discussions, and arguments. It encompasses the history of generations, the strength of women to survive, and the impact of slavery on their way of being.Told with the poetic beauty of Faulkner's magnificent prose this is a novel to be read and reread; savored as you meditate on the meaning of these people and events and how they resemble those you may remember from Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Above all it is about Faulkner's idea of the South and that of his characters, especially Quentin, the young Harvard student who proclaims:"'I don't hate it,' he said. I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" (p 303)

[kirmuriel-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I LOVE this book!! stream-of-consciousness is totally my thing. First book ever to depress me though. And I had to create my timeline.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Every town has their legends; the stories passed down from generation to generation. The Mississippi town of Jefferson has the story of Thomas Sutpen and his "Sutpen One Hundred." All told, Thomas Sutpen was seen as a strange, mysterious and even evil man. When he first arrived in Jefferson no one knew his story. He bought one hundred acres of land and then disappeared, leaving the townspeople to talk, talk, talk. When he returned again he had a crew of slaves, materials, and a plan to build a mansion, a legacy. All the while he continues to be secretive and uncommunicative causing the townspeople speculate as to what he's really up to (as people are bound to do when left to their own devices). The gossip subsides only a little when Sutpen finishes his beautiful home and marries a respectable woman. Quietly he starts a family when his wife gives birth to a son and a daughter. But the chatter can't escape him. New rumors crop up when word gets around of Sutpen encouraging savage fights between his slaves. There's talk he even joins in for sport. And that's just the beginning.Ultimately, Absalom, Absalom! is a story of tragedy after tragedy. Faulkner described it as a story about a man who wanted a son, had too many of them & they ended up destroying him.

[abbeyhar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

i only got halfway through this. i'll finish it sometime.

[aketzle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Block out all distractions before attempting to read this book. And don't be tired. And no wine! Just focus!

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" is definitely one of those books I can appreciate the merits of, without particularly enjoying reading it. All of Faulkner's half-finished sentences, crazy italicizing and general wordiness drove me nuts.The story takes place in the Deep South, where a poor named Thomas Sutpen sets out to establish his legacy. Varying people give pieces of his story, which unfolds slowly layer by layer.The story itself is pretty interesting and Faulkner's slow unveiling is also good.... but it was just a struggle to get through his due to the style it was written in.

[socalnovelist · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is NOT an easy read, on the contrary, it is difficult in that it is structurally archaic, not that I'm complaining: I'm NOT! His prose are so embedded, and his sentences so long, that one must SURELY concentrate, no disturbances, and focus on the plot at every moment. But if you do, you will find a terrifically told story about the old south before, during and after the war; the conventions of the southerners, what they indicated in their behaviors as to what was right and wrong, and how family as well as strangers were dealt with. I LOVED this book, if for nothing else, for the sheer complication and elegance of the language. But the story is beautifully told, not by one narrator, but various narrators/characters in the book. You MUST consider reading it with an open mind, and a concentrated intellect, and then understand Faulkner's writing as purely romantic prose of the south. The plot, being told by a number of different characters makes it a bit difficult to decipher what is going on at times...for me, mainly because I got lost in his lengthy sentences, but I find myself wanting to read it again (and again!) because I imagine him speaking and telling the story in his style of prose...I loved it.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My second most favorite Faulkner (after _The Sound and the Fury_). The family that is portrayed resounds on many levels. Faulkner's use of the English language to portray characters and unique situations is astounding!

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A southern Gothic novel by William Faulkner, written in 1936. The story is set just before, during and after the Civil War. Thomas Sutpen, born poor, decides he will have what it takes to tell someone to use the back door and he does accomplish his goal 'sort of' only much of his past is still a part of his present person and it ends up destroying him and all he hoped to achieve. The story is told mostly through the Quentin, a grandson of the man who was a friend of Thomas Sutpen. There is also a portion told by Rosa Coldfield, and Quentin's father and grandfather. Quentin and his Canadian college friend, Shrevlin, interpret and reinterpret the story. As they tell and retell the story, you learn more and more of the details of this ill fated family. The title, Absalom, Absalom! is from the Bible and references one of David's sons, a son born of a non Israelite woman, a daughter of a king. Absalom rises up and nearly destroys his father and his father's family. Faulkner's stories are allegories of the South. This book is a companion to the Sound and the Fury which is a bout the Compson Family and Quentin is one of the main characters. I like Faulkner's writing for its richness but it is exhausting work.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Incredibly dense, convoluted, and penetrating. I see now why for the generation in which he wrote, as a southern writer Faulkner had myriad ghosts to choose from to write about. Great descriptions and a strong sense of place there is no way any one could be so direct. His insights were numerous but blacks and ex-slaves were mostly secondary or only part of his stories.

[nhbriguy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finally, I finish a Faulkner with comprehension

[ghost_boy-691444 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well this book was difficult as faulk. Sure I questioned if there was a plot at times, but I loved Faulkner's writing style. I also picked up two things with this novel: one that is connects with his other novels, mostly Sound and the Fury, and this book is about having love for the South. This novels other claim to fame is having one of the longest sentences in literature (well this might be different now, but it's a long sentence still: 1,288 words). If you attempt to read this novel be warned the paragraphs, sentences and the 9 chapters are long. I would defiantly not recommend this to virgin Faulkner readers. However, if you're a fan of James Joyce's Ulysses this book will be right up you alley.

[jonbrammer-788089 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Along with The Brothers Karamazov, this is my favorite novel. What I love about Faulkner is his modernism, his total lack of sentimentality. Nothing or nobody is idealized. There are no Atticus Finches or Slims or Sonias here. Everyone is a fallen sinner in a fallen world. Even the character with the strongest morals, Goodhue Coldfield, is myopic and unloving to his daughters.

There is so much to say about Absalom, Absalom! that I don't know where to start. Another reviewer made a comparison to Picasso. I think this is apt. Faulkner's fracturing of the narrative is similar to Picasso's attempt in his Cubist paintings to capture multiple perspectives of his subject. We are not too sure how much to believe Quentin's retelling of the Sutpen story to his Harvard roommate - it is hearsay two generations removed from the events. And then Shreve, the roommate, hijacks the narrative and begins filling in details. How much of this is conjecture? There is the sense of a Romantic and mythical South, a shattered land that fascinates these young men, especially the Canadian Shreve.

There is a key moment when we hear about Thomas Sutpen's quelling of the slave uprising in Haiti:

". . . he just put the musket down and had someone unbar the door and then bar it behind him, and walked out into the darkness and subdued them, maybe by yelling louder, maybe by standing, bearing more than they believed any bones and flesh could or should (should, yes; that would be the terrible thing: to find flesh to stand more than flesh should be asked to stand); maybe at last they themselves turning in horror and fleeing from the white arms and legs shaped like theirs and from which blood could be made to spurt and flow as it could from theirs and containing and indomitable spirit which should have come from the same primary fire which theirs came from but which could not have, could not possibly have (he showed Grandfather the scars, one of which, Grandfather said, came pretty near leaving him a virgin for the rest of his life too) and then daylight came with no drums in it for the first time in eight days, and they emerged (probably the man and the daughter) and walked across the burned land with the bright sun shining down on it as if had happened, walking now in what must have been an incredible desolate solitude and peaceful quiet, and found him and brought him to the house: and when he recovered he and the girl were engaged. Then he stopped."

So we can discuss at length Faulkner's language and his cadence and his eternal sentences, but I just want to say that I think he is imitating / emulating / parodying the Southern loquacious voice, the incessant talking without speaking truth. Recounting events and details without reflection, without comment. The tendency of language to obfuscate and not illuminate.

More importantly, this passage is a clue to a central idea in the novel - Sutpen as Satan. I mean a Miltonian Satan, a Nietzschean Superman, a Dostoevskian Napoleon, not the boring old Biblical Satan. Sutpen seems to be able to overpower the rebelling slaves through sheer force of will, or will to power. The Haitian slaves employ voodoo to weaken their overlords, but something about Sutpen terrifies them.

There are other clues: the constant reference to Sutpen as an "ogre" (Rosa) or a "demon" (Shreve). Sutpen defies the rules of his society, while his one goal is to reach the pinnacle of the Southern class system as represented by the indolent plantation owner in Tidewater Virginia. Sutpen possesses a life force that is also destructive: his ambition, his envy, his will and strength are demonic in nature. We are reminded of Macbeth, Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. Sutpen employs the "forces of darkness" (his "wild niggers")to achieve his ends. The results are a curse placed on his offspring, the casual miscegenation and shunning of those with African blood, the Civil War as the hand of God that Sutpen both masters and is mastered by.

Faulkner is at the height of his powers here. His influence is clearly seen in Cormac McCarthy (especially Blood Meridian) and Robert Penn Warren. Even so, he stands alone as a singular and bloody voice from the deep South.

[algybama · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Poetic and hypnotizing. Unfortunately my experience was somewhat ruined by reading it on my phone's Kindle app. Now I know ebooks fuck up more than just pagination. Paragraphs do more than structure and pace a narrative - they provide waypoints and shelter for the eyes - and in a book where paragraphs can go on and on for page after page the arrival of indentation is something akin to a desert oasis. So when that same book is divided across 1000s of phone screens, each of which is a huge square block of text, indentation becomes something even more startling. It takes on the significance of a chapter break. And it can't be anticipated, counted on, because I was only able to see a sentence or two ahead at a time. I literally became lost in a sea of words. I was unable to recognize the winding-down of a paragraph as a new one approached – sort of like reading a complex sentence stripped of its punctuation. It was kind of interesting, I guess, but I don’t think I experienced the book the way I was supposed to.

[lanewillson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Several years ago, nearly forty now, an English professor challenged me to read all of Faulkner's novels in the order he wrote them. I had read some Faulkner in school, and the best effort I could muster brought me somewhere close to the state line of appreciation of his work. The anxiety of Faulkner's paragraphs that are pages long, and the limited vocabulary I share with many of my East Tennessee kin, were always the breakdowns that would end any journey I started with old Bill. About five years ago, I decided to try again. The magic of Kindle patched the tires of my vocabulary as we went. Patience, a tad of maturity (a very small tad), and the humility to pull over and rest if needed helped me roll through each of Faulkner's passages as they came. But to be honest, I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. Then I got to "Absalom, Absalom!" WOW! I finally get the term southern gothic, but any honest review would admit that for me, understanding Faulkner is still a great distance's read away. At least now I've got a full tank for the rest of the journey. Thank you, Mr. Cushman!

[alaskayo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There’s nothing like a good Faulkner novel[1] and this is my first, assigned in my Eng. 3336 Amer. Fict. 1930-ATM class @ Texas State Univ. (TSU) and as someone who regularly reads books from guys like Pynchon & Joyce & D.F. Wallace & c.—you know, regular authors of impenetrable voluminous tomes—and coming away from it I can only say that Faulkner is fucking hard. I am ashamed to admit what I expected was almost belletristic, that it’d be like, super easy compared to GR, and I’d be able to breeze through it despite the fact that the whole book is nearly one massive wall of goddamn’ s.o.c. text, and truthfully this made speed-reading easier (i.e., the s.o.c. written-in-two-weeks style), and yet left me missing huge parts of the story, incapable of following along, if you get what I’m saying—I even missed the super-obvious homosexual overtones b/w brothers[2] Henry Sutpen & Charles Bon[3], which I don’t know how especially after all the comparisons to Spartans and the billion times I read …and Charles loved Henry, and Henry loved Charles like really hard… and c., so thank you Mrs. Victoria Smith, prof. @ TSU, because without you—and even though you're not exactly my favorite professuh[4]—because without you I wouldn’t have understood a single part of this book, I wouldn’t have understood that it was some huge metaphor for the fall of the south, that it was told on a mythic level, heck, I wouldn’t have even noticed that this story was taking place not in Louisiana[5] but Mississippi, or that every character with a hint of an African lineage is never given a voice, or that most of the events recounted by Rosa, Mr. Compson, and especially those b/w college-mates Quentin and Shreve are likely complete crap, that large parts of this dusty, wisteria-filled southern history are based in the imagination of Quentin and Shreve, adding motivations, melodramatic sub-plots and whatever else to fill all the lacunae left by the sometimes conflicting non-linear accounts of the rise and fall of the enigmatic Thomas Sutpen[6] we (read: you, me & Quentin) are told in the first major chunk of the novel, which is largely about the stoical Quentin haunted by the south’s past history, pestering Rosa and his old man over and over again trying to unravel Sutpen’s life, and like I’m told this obsession with history he has as well as some unexplored (in this novel) incestuous desires he holds for his sister are the major causes for his suicide @ the end of The Sound and the Fury, which yes he’s also in, and t’wards the end of Absalom I’m starting to think, since the already-mentioned theory that most of Sutpen’s life is fiction even in the fictional eyes of the fictional Quentin, that a lot of the family melodrama, the homosexuality between Henry & Chuck, the incestuous relationship(s) b/w Henry & Judith & Charles, and cetera are really just Quentin projecting his own fucked up life on this history of the south, but whatever’s going on, it’s clear that the Sutpens never had any control over their lives, as it (their history) plays out like a fucking tragedy, that strings—the same strings—are holding every name tight and no matter what they do, no matter what their intentions and what their will desires, they can’t fight against these strings, their life’s set in clichéd stone to haunt future retarded generations incapable of dealing with this shit to kill themselves over, but really it’s because Sutpen (Thomas) is really just a dick, a really selfish dick and the embodiment of wisteria & the miasmatic 19th c. southern culture, and speaking of miasmas, you’ll see Faulkner use and overuse words like that (miasma) and death and dying and dusk and desolation and gaunt[7] and wisterias will be summoned at the very least 3 times per page for your imagination’s pleasure while Thomas sets up his property, to be known as Sutpen’s Hundred, completely without the help of anyone but his ‘wild niggers’[8], and like in doing this he’s escaping his past, rising up from nothing to something, which along with propagating his purely white and therefore perfect bloodline because that’s the thing to do in a southern home with traditional pre-Lincoln-ass-kicking values, yet is also the thing he keeps fucking up, e.g., Clytemnestra, appropriately-named daughter of Thomas & an unknown, unvoiced slave, and the already-mentioned Bon, whose mother like, totally deceived Thomas in keeping her partially-black background a secret from him even after they were married and had spawned lil’ Charles Bon, a totally uncool thing to do to a hip, brooding guy like Sutpen, and a guy like Sutpen always gets his way, so say Goodbye to Dear Wife #1 and Hello Ellen & 100% Aryan children Henry & Judith, whom with things work out swell until her death and you know all that incest and murder hoopla, &c., nothing else goes Sutpen’s way completely, the poor guy. There are numerous other subplots for the reader to delve into, and of course a tragic (fitting in with the whole Greek tragedy structure that I’m told and blindly believe like a good student) ending for Sutpen’s chivalric south—The South—and by God the ending is quite spooky, chilling, hair-raising, awesome, &c. when ye’re able to actually follow along with the s.o.c. mile-long sentences, and once again only about 5% of this, if that, I would have understood w/o the help of Prof. Smith of Eng. 3336’s help, and also thanks to her invaluable help, I’m looking forward to more Faulkner, and at some future date re-reading Absalom, Absalom!, because, seriously folks, this is not obviously a guy you get away with reading only once; his books demand much more of the reader, they demand to be studied at length over multiple perusals, &c., which is like, pain in the ass notwithstanding, way cool, so good luck, prospective/future readers; good fucking luck. F.V.: 95%[2,850][1] (except perhaps a good or even better novel from Cormac McCarthy[1a] [at least after his first stumble (i.e., The Orchard Keeper)])

[1a] Something I’ve been told via Internet forums for ages and never could truly agree or dis- with any sense of certainty until now.[2] (spoiler)[3] Whose name even after 170 pgs and two in-class essays I was still reading as ‘Bom.’[4] I’m sorry.[5] I had just read Toole’s Confed. of Dunces.[6] I.e., the ‘chivalrous’ pre-Civ. War South.[7] Which is abused in one of my favorite scenes 1/3rd thru the novel when Mr. Compson—I think it’s him narrating to Quentin, but it may very well have been angry old Rosa—when Mr. Compson tells us the reader about the mythopoeic confrontation b/w Charles and Henry when Charles is like trying to marry their (Henry + Charles) sister even though they both are fully completely aware she’s their sister having recently found out about their own blood relation and the dooming factoid that Charles is like oh Jesus 1/16ths black or something, so Charles trots up looking gaunt on his gaunt horse and Henry’s all like You shall not pass! standing at the gate of Sutpen’s Hundred[7a] and Charles has the nerve—the jerk—to defy this command and attempt to lay his sister in revenge against Thomas or Henry, I honestly can’t really remember but there was some sort of imaginary confrontation during the Civ. War b/w Henry and Charles and Thomas on the field telling Henry about Charles’ blood connection to himself (Henry) but this isn’t something to celebrate, b/c this blood is tainted, or something along those lines, but yes Charles, face a-gaunt, steps forward and Henry, face matching Charles’ gaunt for gaunt[7b] and then some pulls out what I like to imagine was a minigun and just absolutely mows that boy down.

[7a] It’s 100 square miles, and belongs to Sutpen.

[7b] Doesn’t really make sense.[8] I.e., French.(N.B.: The ability to edit and control footnotes in any way on LT is nonexistent [as far as I know], so excuse the ugly execution.)(N.B. x2: Since writing this I've written like multiple more essays on it and had to study it a lot more and have come to really understand the mythological aspects of it [as that's where my major interests lie] and even came up all pretentiously w/ my own theories on it as a Barthian metamythological prologue to postmodern fiction and the advent of television's influence on literature--/proud /proud /proud /superfuckingpretentious.)

[beauxarts79 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the books I want with me on a deserted island. A flawless masterpiece of English literature.

[nobodhi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

i wouldn't start here, with faulkner, but this is probably as good as it gets, and arguably his great american novel

reading was more like seeing, and once done, it was like i'd experienced it all myself

[kgib_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot I don't understand about this book, but my instincts tell me it's justifiably a classic. I liked the language and structure a lot. Maybe the characters are more symbols than three dimensional, but they're pretty interesting symbols. Faulkner's descriptions of black people are highly racist, but I /think/ he's trying to comment on it rather than perpetuate it... need to find out more about that.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is incredible. I'm dazed.

Review to come later. I need to lie down.

[kathleen586 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not for the faint of heart. It's probably one of the hardest, more confusing books I've ever read.

[blackglasses_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I would compare it to a nightmarish journey into the world of southern gothic writing. Long sprawling sentences, multiple layers of families, and interwoven tales told through the eyes of an old embittered woman. Good stuff, but it is a literary workout. Expect to be emotionally exhausted after spending time reading this unique, poetic, and tragically beautiful novel.