Customer Reviews

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Barron's Book Notes)

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Graham Swift's Booker prize winning novel is an unashamedly disguised version of Faulkner's brilliant novel. It has some of his finest passages in it including the famous one-line chapter of mothers being a fish

This story is both complex and well written through the use of perspective, but its complexities do not make it a good story. Personally, I feel it is a story that does not even need to be told. The characters are backward and hard to understand. Initially you feel as if all of the facts and details that are included will lead to an interesting end, but it is not an ending at all just a weird closure. Basically it is a story of a bunch of hicks that carry their dead mother around in a coffin and learn of their mental incapasity to deal with it.

Yoknawpatawpha County must have been a sorry place tolive. God's Country? I hope not. Faulkner has some good books, butthis isn't one of them. Somebody hit these people with the stupid stick. In the sequel, Dewey Dell's works in the local cathouse and wonders why she's got ten kids. Cash has more concrete in his head than on his leg. Vardaman is still dumb as dirt. Addie is still dead and stinking up the county. And teachers make you read this stuff?