http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1351340...

Intense stream-of-consciousness tale of a poor Mississippi family, fulfilling their wife and mother's dying wish to be buried in her inconveniently distant home town. The family dynamics are weird and understated, and the time sequencing is occasionally jarring between the dozen or so different narrators. But the various voices feel very authentic, consistent in word and thought, and it feels like Faulkner supplied a stylistic model that others have followed (it reminded me of both Orson Scott Card and Terry Bisson, two authors from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum). An absorbing and somewhat disturbing book. ( )

On the surface, this is simple Faulkner, what with its short chapters and paragraphs, although it can still be just as confusing at times as Benji's opening section of The Sound and the Fury. For a student or anyone else who has just struggled through a first reading of The Sound and the Fury or Absalom Absalom, it would be easy to miss some of the nuance and deeper meaning in the narrative. Definitely worth a re-read. ( )

Quit reading after 40 pages. The language was too colloquial and difficult to follow. I couldn't figure out who was who. I can imagine that it would be good but I just didn't have the patience to get thru it. ( )

I probably need to read more Faulkner, as The Sound & The Fury was incredible, and this book was almost as good. His prose has great rhythms and I like the weird stylistics ticks (ending a chapter in the middle of a sentence, the use of italics) even if I'm not immediately sure what to make of them. ( )

In 1986, Graves County, Kentucky, the school board banned this book about a poor white family in the midst of crisis, from its high school English reading list because of 7 passages which made reference to God or abortion and used curse words such as "bastard," "goddam," and "son of a bitch." None of the board members had actually read the book.