Matt B. (BuffaloSavage) reviewed on 8/5/2022 + 53 more book reviews

This excellent novel from 1932 is a Great Southern Novel, right up there with All the King's Men. On one hand, the plot and incidents unfold in a readily comprehensible fashion. While there are flashbacks and shifts in narrative voice, they are not as baffling as in TS&TF or As I Lay Dying. This is nearly a stand-alone novel, with few references to other novels in his Yoknapatawpha cycle. As for theme, it's Faulkner's enduring theme, how people endure terrible events. Just like reading TS&TF, even the most hardcore readers have to approach a Faulkner novel as if it were music, getting carried away by the rhythm and flow without trying to understand every note perfectly. In Faulkner's prose there are passages that seem off, that seem only kind of clear or not clear at all. So a reader has to read it twice. Like momma done tole me, nothing good comes easy.

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