So, what did the group make of it? Fair to say that everyone found it difficult to get into, but all that attended the meeting had persevered and were glad that they had done so. The book is written as a stream of consciousness, and as such, little context is provided by each narrator. You really have to be paying attention when reading this book - it's certainly not one to pick up as a bed time read - otherwise it can be difficult to follow who is talking about what.
Chapters tend to be brief, with a number of narrators mainly from the Bundren family plus some friends of theirs.
Personally, this book inspired me to study US Literature at university. I'd never before come across this style of writing. The complexity of the characters together with the other worldliness of the deep South captured my imagination. Fast forward some 20 years and revisiting William Faulkner's work was a real treat.
Other books:
The Siege/The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
Before I Sleep by S J Watson
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes (similar work by Georges Perec)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Next time:
Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes OR Snow Drops by A D Miller
March 2012
"Life was created in the valleys. It blew up into the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down."
I'm so glad that Natalia chose this book. It was certainly frustrating to begin with but I found I had to settle into the rhythm and the language and then I was away.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I stuck with it - the language and stream of consciousness style made the narrative difficult to follow on occasions, and it took me a good half of the book to work out the relationships between the characters. Not an easy read, and coming straight out of reading lots of crime novels, quite a hard transition, but the story really picked up about half way through, and the ending made me laugh out loud.
ReplyDeleteI decided, on your advice, to start again from the beginning reading it a little more slowly and with an attempt at an accent in my head (which ends up being more Yorkshire than Deep South but it works for me) and that certainly helps. It's much more enjoyable already.
DeleteI was talking to someone yesterday who thought it was a black family - interesting that the group felt it was a white family...
I've finished it! It was worth reading, glad I had Natalia on hand to help me understand some passages. Thanks for recommending it Natalia, I would have never read it otherwise.
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