As I Lay Dying

I always enjoy reading one of the all-time classic books I have not read previously.  So reading William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, gave me the chance to place a checkmark in the list of all-time Top 100 best novels I had not read yet.  And it was worth it!  Faulkner, a Nobel Prize winning American author from the south, is known for his books that best capture the human condition and challenge that life often gives to each of us.  Faulkner uses a unique style of writing in this book having fifteen different characters narrate the various chapters in the book.  The story focuses on Addie Bundren, a married woman and mother of five, who is very ill while living on the family farm.  Addie dies early in the book and the remainder of the story focuses on the process of bringing Addie’s body for a proper burial in the town of Jefferson, which is a good travel from their farm.  (Note the time of the novel is set prior to cars and other transportation, so their journey involves taking the body, in a home-made coffin, by horse and wagon.  The journey is difficult, which includes: a major rain storm; a washed-away bridge; meeting various people who attempt to help and/or challenge the family; and various personal family issues (broken leg of one son, the knowledge that the daughter is pregnant, and family squabbles over money).  Throughout the book the reader enters the minds of the individual characters, who all face their own personal grief of a lost mother/spouse and also the issues that each one faces in a very difficult world.  Faulkner’s ability to present the psychological dimensions of a family unit and real-life dilemmas using the words of poor people from the south makes for a masterpiece, a book that speaks to the times.  While at first I was worried about the various voices bringing confusion as a reader, this was not the case.  I highly recommend this rather short story.