Lie Down in Darkness Author:William Styron This is a novel in which the South-once Faulkner's, now Styrons's-looms dark and ominous in the background, with its Biblical rhetoric, the conflict between a tradition of religious fundamentalism and modern skepticism, racial contrasts, and the industrialization of a rural society. It is the South where "the ground is bloody and full of guilt w... more »here you were born and you must tread a long narrow path toward your destiny."
But much more than a novel of time and place, it is a story of a tormented family submerged in infidelity, and driven by a vengeful love that is blocked, hurt and perverted; of adults who can never escape their childhood and will never escape their destiny. It is a story of a husband unfaithful to his wife, a mistress unfaithful to her husband, a girl unfaithful to the man she marries.
It is a story of Peyton Loftis, who frantically needs a husband precisely because she loves her father; who hates the mother who is viciously jealous of her; who seeks childhood innocence and finds death...of her decadent, yet loving father, Milton, whose infidelity has made his marriage no more than a stage drama...of her unforgiving mother, Helen, who can love only what she can control - her crippled daughter, Maudie, or the childish part of her husband.« less