A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote's novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O'Connor, yet utterly original.
Follow Me Down: A Novel
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A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote's novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O'Connor, yet utterly original.
About the Author
Shelby Foote was born on November 7, 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina. During World War II he served as a captain of field artillery but never saw combat. After World War II he worked briefly for the Associated Press in their New York bureau. In 1953 he moved to Memphis, where he lived for the remainder of his life.Foote was the author of six novels: Tournament, Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season, Shiloh, Jordan County, and September, September. He is best remembered for his 3-volume history The Civil War: A Narrative, which took twenty years to complete and resulted in his being a featured expert in Ken Burns' acclaimed Civil War documentary. Over the course of his writing career, Foote was also awarded three Guggenheim fellowships.Shelby Foote died in 2005 at the age of 88.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Follow Me Down is a must read.,
This review is from: Follow Me Down: A Novel (Paperback)
Follow Me Down tells the story of a fifty-year old man and his wife, a love-lost young woman, a deaf and dumb young man and his mother, and a defense attorney with a chip on his shoulder. Told through the eyes of eight characters, the story revolves around a violent act, recounting the story behind it. The novel is filled with well developed characters overflowing with uncontrollable emotions and the resulting consequences of them. In closing, Shelby Foote's Follow Me Down grabs your attention and holds it until the last page.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Experiment in Radical Realism,
By
This review is from: Follow Me Down: A Novel (Paperback)
A murder story in a small Mississippi town is told through the first person voices of several involved characters. We know who did it right away, since the novel opens during the criminal trial through the voice of the bailiff. We also immediately know how, when, and where. The question is why, and the text spirals back in time through the various voices in search of that question.
This was Shelby Foote's second novel about this town, and the first he considered mature. He was young and fierce, but with a very controlled fire and a precocious knack for narrative suspense and smoothness; it moves right along and you overlook the really radical method of story-telling. The technique is a considered extension and development of Faulkner's multi-voice method in As I Lay Dying, and the reader is required to overlook the fact that illiterate, retarded, and in one instance even a dead person are "writing." Thinking of the voices on stage as in classic Greek drama may help you get over the logical gulf, and that is doubtless a context Foote would have liked you to see him in. This was his break-out book to a mass audience, prior to his famous Civil War series. He was out to duel with Goliath, and if the book does not entirely succeed it is amazing how much is achieved; in any event I give it 4 instead of 5 stars, as he was shortly to set his own 5 star standard in fiction. Persons who know Foote's mellow grandfather personna from the Ken Burns Civil War series on TV will be forced to sit bolt upright, shortly into this saga. It is gritty realism on the level of Erskine Caldwell or Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Ugly details, while not wallowed in, are not withheld. The South is not romanticized, but neither is it subjected to political correctness. Does Foote tell why the murder happened? That would spoil the read. Suffice it to say that like the most serious fiction writers the world over, Foote's answers lay not in social science, criminal science, psychology, etc. It would be not only a cliche, however, but also off the mark to say he "probes the human heart." The human voice is what the young Foote was probing, and he perhaps would always see it is a somewhat more objectively reliable measure than what "the heart" may or may not have to say about itself.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Intersting and flawed novel...,
By Julia (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Follow Me Down: A Novel (Paperback)
I read this after "Love in a Dry Season" (which on the whole is a better book) and was not terribly disappointed. "Follow Me Down" is certainly an arresting read. I have to say, however, that a few characters Foote chooses as narrators (Circuit Clerk, Reporter) are perhaps not as interesting or necessary as others, and that the book would function as a better whole if Foote reused his more interesting and sympathetic characters instead of introducing minor observers as narrators. Surprisingly, Foote's women characters are the most interesting and sympathetic, although they also get the least time on-stage. This really disappointed me. He spends five (I think?) sections with Eustis, the murderer, and while he is a fractured man to be sure, his voice simply doesn't hold up the way Beulah's does, or Kate's (in the section "Wife").
And one more thing. Perhaps this isn't a valid criticism, but if you've read Faulkner, a lot of this seems a bit like an overt homage rather than simply "expanding on a style". Many of the techniques and themes (even the setting) are so similar as to be off-putting. As I said, perhaps this isn't even a criticism. After all, Foote was from the same state and doubtlessly affected by many of the same experiences. So. Just a thought. Overall, a great and fascinating read. I finished it in three days.
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