Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sad but affecting book, April 15, 2002
William Styron is likely the greatest novelist no one has ever heard of. His name is even less recognizable than Faulkner's, or other great American writers: Steinbeck, Hemingway, etc. And yet, in my opinion, his works are far superior. With only four novels to choose from out of his career he has made it very difficult for himself to be regarded in those terms, but he has still achieved a wide amount of critical acclaim, with a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award to his credit.His novels are not light novels. They are not coffee table books, but a rather serious discussions on moral issues written with an eloquence that is unmatched in modern writing. Lie Down in Darkness is his first novel, and is much like what I have just said. As a first novel it is necessarily experimental, although the effect of this experimentation is at times hard to tell. Following through flashback the trials of one Virginia family on the day of their daughter's funeral, Lie Down in Darkness leads up to the present, describing in tragic terms how the family has come apart and where it is now. This is great writing, some of the best writing I have ever read, as realistic as any Dickens novel, and as engaging as anything by Baldwin. It is not a happy book, but it is the best book I have read about the American family, far greater and relevant than anything I have read by Morrison.
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40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Darkness and despondency, all in one story, July 14, 2000
William Styron, in Lie Down in Darkness, tells the story of Peyton Loftis, the beautiful daughter of Helen and Milton Loftis, her ultimate suicide, and her family's contribution to her fate. Sad, yet compelling. As I read, my revulsion for the characters grew line by line, for they are wasted, empty, and they drown themselves in a swamp of despair and impotency. Helen is a vindictive, jealous mother who takes painful jabs at anyone in her path; Milton is an incestuous alcoholic who can't own up to his failures and who is stuck in a sort of paralyzed stupor; and Peyton, well, she is a genetic carryover of her parents-from her mother she learns revenge, and from her father, alcoholism.The story is one of severe despondency, a portrait of lives that have lost their savor and are headed toward destruction. Of all the characters in the story, the Negro house servants come forth as the strongest. They have a spiritual strength that contrasts strongly with that of the Loftis.' The overwhelmingly best quality of the book, I believe, is the beauty of the prose. It's like an epic poem, lyrical and dramatic and sweepingly colorful. And, believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Peyton's stream-of-consciousness marathon just before she killed herself. Styron made it enjoyable and I will always remember the flightless birds and how they follow Peyton all over New York and also the $39.95 clock that Peyton perceives as her refuge from the evil world. Is this what mental illness is really like? This book is certainly one to be read again.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lie Down In Darkness perfects Southern Gothic, May 17, 2000
Lie Down In Darkness, Styron's first novel, published when he was just 22, is a masterpiece of psychological realism and storytelling in the Southern Gothic tradition of Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Conner. That it was created by such a young mind is testament to the author's genius; that it has yet to be rivaled as a stirring, oftentimes painful and disturbing portrait of a doomed family, is testament to the writing. Composed with thick, purposeful prose, heavy on similie, metaphor and description, the novel charts the rise and fall of the Loftis Family, an archetypal rendering of the Soutnern Gentry. We follow the tragic downfall of Milton, the drunken patriarch, Ellen, the frigid mother, and the two Loftis daughters, one born perfect, one born crippled. It is a novel of abundant ontological truth, which will reach in and strangle the unconscious sensibilities of almost any reader, regardless of background or predispotition. The novel's beauty ranks with the prose of Lawrence, the passion of Rimbaud and Kundera, the depth and spiritual metaphysics of Doestoyevsky; It is both story and case study. And ultimately we are shepherded through tragedy after tragedy into the climax--the suicide of the immeasurably beautiful and desired Peyton Loftis--as we walk moment to moment with her, peering inside the poisoned stream of consciousness that overwhelms and eventually claims her. Lie Down In Darkness belongs in the canon of Great American Masterpieces. It's significance has only begun to be understood.
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