#61 - Light in August - William Faulkner

#61

Title:  Light in August

Author:   William Faulkner

Reader: Mark Hammer

Genre:  Novel

Category:  Fiction

Rating:  B+

Published:  1932

Dates:  9/11/16– 9/27/16

Cds/Hrs:  16/18.25

I’d meant to listen to this in August, the month Tom Nissley had suggested it be read, but someone else had checked it out from the library.  Instead, September worked great for me.  I must say it was my favorite Faulkner novel so far, having read The Rievers and A Fable. 

Sandwiched between the story of “a guileless pregnant woman who walks from Alabama to Mississippi in search of the father of her unborn child” and the same woman with a three month old child on the same quest at the end of the book, we find Joe Christmas, “a tortured young man of mixed ancestry whose isolation escalates to homicidal rage.”  It is Joe Christmas’s story that frames the novel.  I like what the back cover says – “With its dramatic back-tracking into Joe’s troubled past, Light in August rushes the reader like flooding water to an unexpected and inspired conclusion.  As Joe fulfills his own destiny, he in turn plays out the doom of the South.” 

This story remains timeless and one that readers from the 21^st century will be able to relate.