A Death in the Family

“On the rough cut grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there….The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds.” -Page 7

James Agee's posthumously awarded Pulitzer Prize winning novel is thought to be based on his own life (his middle name is Rufus, just like the son in the story). Set in Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 1915, Rufus is enjoying all that is right with the world. A loving father that takes him to the movies and allows him other indulgences show more that his mother wouldn't approve of, a great aunt who dotes on him and purchases for him the cap he fancies and an extended family that showers him with love. His biggest worry involves the boys who pick on him on his way to school. And then the unthinkable happens: his loving father Jay is killed suddenly in a car accident, returning from his parents’ house, several hundred miles away. His drunken brother called him in the middle of the night suggesting that their father was near death, which proved to be untrue and there lies the irony in this story.

The story is told mainly through the viewpoints of Jay’s wife Mary, brother Ralph and young son, Rufus. The magnificence of this book is its’ lyrical prose (the entire prologue reads as a poem). I found myself rereading parts of the book over and over again because of the beautiful sound of the verses. The story is, of course, morbidly sad, and, in the hands of a less skilled writer, would have been very distasteful. But Agee is terrific at making you empathize with these characters. After receiving the initial news about “a serious accident,” Mary and her Great Aunt Hannah, await the return of Mary’s brother, Andrew with news of Jay’s injuries and when he returns those three and Mary’s parents speak for hours about the tragedy. The author made me feel as if I was in the room with them because the give and take of their conversation was so well done.

Agee’s treatment of Catholic religion suggests that he had a bad experience with it in his own life. Although Mary and Hannah are very religious and fall back on their faith to get them through this tough time, the author is hard on the Catholic faith with the inclusion of the rigid and hard-nosed Father Jackson, and revealing that Andrew and Joel, Mary’s father, have little faith.

I love the way Agee made the story a refreshing one rather than the maudlin tale it could have turned into, by revealing that Jay was a flawed character, whom other characters had to warm up to. It would’ve been so easy for the author to fall into the trap of creating a character that was bigger than life.

My favorite character was Rufus. I loved the way his mind worked and how he analyzed all the difficulties he faced and presented them through his child-like innocence. In the prologue, Agee says, “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” Rufus grew up in a hurry that summer. Highly recommended. show less

James Agee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Death in the Family captured the initial moments of grief with beautiful clarity. The shock, anger and sadness that inflicted each character was so realistically drawn, it was near flawless. Won posthumously in 1957, the edition of A Death in the Family that I read contained only minor changes to Agee’s writing, plus two sections that were not placed formally into the story by the author. To think that Agee wrote this masterpiece without the benefit of an editor shows you the caliber of his writing. Like his character development, this story was close to perfect.

Jay Follett was a husband and father with a slightly mysterious past, who was called to his father’s bedside in the middle of show more the night. On his trip home, his car experienced mechanical failure, resulting in Jay’s instantaneous death. He left behind his wife, Mary and his two children, Rufus and Catherine.

The mysterious aspects of Jay’s life enthralled me. You get the impression that he was an alcoholic – perhaps on the wagon at the time of his death – who pulled himself out of nothing into a productive life. As Mary’s family learned of Jay’s death, you discovered they were not supportive of Mary and Jay’s marriage initially, but as time evolved, they grew to love him. Without a doubt, he held a tight bond with his son, Rufus. For most of the book, you witnessed the emotional roller coaster that the family experiences as they deal with Jay’s death. From wanting to know the details of the accident to trying to sleep and eat, death and daily living were juxtaposed for the readers to consider: How would you deal with the sudden death of a loved one?

The book ends on the day of the funeral, leaving you curious about how the family would cope so early in their grief. How would Mary survive without her husband’s financial support? How would the children learn to live without their father? Agee leaves many questions unanswered, but made one thing clear: grief is a force to be reckoned with. It ebbs and flows throughout a person’s lifetime; always there – sometimes in the distance, sometimes very close. A Death in the Family was a wonderful tribute to this raw human emotion. show less

La mejor obra leída este año, por ahora. Difícil de superar, esta descripción de lo que supone la muerte de lo que amas en los que se quedan. Lo que hace la religión, a quién le sirve su consuelo y a quién no. Como vives la muerte si eres un adulto ya domesticado o si eres un niño en proceso de aprendizaje. La estructura de la obra con esos textos en cursiva, con todo lo que pasa por la cabeza de un niño de unos 7 u 8 años, situados donde el editor quiso ya que la obra estaba a medio rematar, no creo que varíen las intenciones del autor, que se salta una de las convenciones principales del escritor, no describas, muestra. Agee, no sé si por ser periodista, lo cuenta todo. Y aún así no es aburrido, ni pesado. Es show more sorprendete. Un milagro. show less

A beautiful, lyrical, poetic book that's simply a joy to read. Mainly taking place over a just few days, it paints a picture of a family before and after a much loved husband and father dies in a car accident. In addition, the book is a vibrant portrayal of 1915 Tennessee, when cars were beginning to take prominence in the cities and rural people still relied on horse power.

Much of the book is from the perspective of the son, Rufus, six years old at the time, who is a very observant and sensitive child, and very close to his father. Agee really puts us in the mind of a young boy trying to understand big concepts like death, religion, and his family's reactions to his father's death, in particular his mother's. Other perspectives are show more given and it feels like one of the themes is how we struggle to understand each other and, often unsuccessfully, try to decipher the thoughts of another.

The book intersperses almost stream of consciousness sections with straight-forward portrayals of scenes. Some of these are just stunning, such as in part 2 when Rufus's mother and great-aunt await news of her husband's accident and later her parents and brother sitting with her to console her. That the author can make these quiet, simple moments so engrossing, is amazing.

There has been some controversy over the years regarding how the book was edited as Agee himself died in 1955 before he could publish it. I can't imagine the book being much more perfect as is. It won the Pulitzer Prize, was adapted into a popular play and movie and has become beloved by generations of readers. show less

'nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment on any neck'
By sally tarbox on 3 April 2013
Format: Paperback
A heartbreaking work about the first few days after a death, from the point of view of a wife and her two small children.
For the first third of the book, Agee lets us into normal family life prior to the accident. The reader is constantly aware of the dreaded axe about to fall, and as good natured father Jay is called out in the middle of the night to visit his own sick father, the reader is aware of hints and symbols:
"It was just nearing daybreak when he came to the river; he had to rap several times on the window of the little shanty before the ferryman awoke."
The uncertainty in the immediate show more aftermath ;the confusion in the children's minds; religious dissent between family members (as their deeply Catholic mother struggles to maintain her faith: ' "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory", she said with almost vindictive certitude.')
Wonderfully written and with hope amid the tragedy... show less

I have never seen the portrait of grief drawn so vividly and sporadically as in Agee’s posthumous novel, A Death in the Family. Every space, light, distance, and shadow weigh heavy against every ounce of feeling derive from the minutiae of everyday gestures and conversations; and they weigh heaviest once they turn into a series of memories. Since this novel does not rely on a rich narrative but more on the inevitable wake of death, it painfully but genuinely communicates—in often repetitive but differently structured phrases—a confrontation with mortality through its band of characters. The children are confused, the others conflicted, one is ladened with guilt, the wife is submerged both in emptiness and a roller coaster of show more emotions because in A Death in the Family, no months or years roll by but a day by day painstaking coping until the funeral. But as much as Agee’s prose is stunning it feels incomplete with some characters underused and underdeveloped. The italicised parts which are interspersed between the present seem out of place, even dull and negligible. Whilst its religious themes are also appreciable I can’t help but notice how unpolished they are that they just meddle with the novel’s intent. It is always questionable to publish an author’s leftover works after a sudden death. They often look like a mosaic created from whatever scraps are available. This is noticeable in A Death in the Family but how palpably slow-moving this all is gives bereavement the potential to immortalise; its mourners surrounded by its many arms in whispers of gnawing thoughts of the departed. For this they live on. show less

Just finished reading A Death in the Family James Agee's novel for one of my face to face book groups.

Knoxville Tennessee. 1915. Husband and Wife and two small children and their extended family. Father goes out one night for a drive in his "Tin Lizzie" and dies on the way back. That’s it.

Hadn't read Agee before this and was just blown away by the craftsmanship of the writing - beautiful, simple, intense, poetic.

He has the gift to be able to show at once the grown up writer telling the story and the six year old boy living through it.

Don't think I've ever read a book that so clearly delineated the mind of a child dealing with all the strangeness and terror of a child's life.

Nice to read a book that shows a person of faith - a show more devout Southern Christian - honestly, simply and without caricature or grotesquery.

He gets the voices of the people right too -- what is said and what is left unsaid.

The last scene of the boy going to his father's funeral is haunting and memorable.

Glad I read it. What a writer. Wow. show less