Search - As I Lay Dying

Hard to follow and sort out the characters at first. I particularly like Faulkner's stream of consciousness style. The characters were very colorful. A good change of style and pace for me.

Oh my goodness. I just love this book. It is written so well, from the varying points of view of the characters. It tells a deeply disturbing tale that may seem so harrowing that the book could be simply labelled as depressing, but there is so much more to it. The motifs, themes, language and development of character are brought together so beautifully. William Faulker excelled on this one.

I had a very hard time getting into this book. His writing seems all over the place to me. Although, I will admit that I enjoyed how he ended it.

Hard to follow the characters so I encourage you to make a list of the characters from the beginning.

There is no way around the fact that Faulkner is hard to read. However, this is one of his more enjoyable books. It is humorous even though the subject matter is so disturbing. Personally, Varderman is the most intriguing character. No one cares enough to explain to him the situation surrounding his mother's death, so while his conclusion that his mother is a fish is disturbing, it still remains humorous.

This was my first attempt at Faulkner. Somehow I managed to go through my entire undergraduate degree in English without so much as glancing at a Faulkner book. I was neither surprised nor disappointed in this book, it was about what I expected. It takes awhile to get in to the vernacular, but the story is interesting enough to get you through. All-in-all a worthy classic but by no means a "fun" read.