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Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
5.0

This is the first Faulkner book I've read & it blew me away.

It's a powerhouse, a tragic (?) epic of the South.

It's not an easy read (or perhaps my brain is mush). Long, convoluted, strangely structured sentences or phrases. Overlapping, sometimes conflicting, versions & viewpoints. It did help me to read a sparknotes chapter summary after I finished each chapter in the book, just to make sure I was on track, following everything. Rarely do I contemplate reading a book a second time, but I think this is one I could & should read a second time.

Being born in the South & living most of my life in various places in the South, this book seemed oddly familiar but outdated, yet also timely & strange all at the same time.

There's so much to unpack here. Thinking of when Faulkner wrote this (& the fact that he was a Southerner), he was quite forthright in his facing of racism, of his looking at the Civil War, of looking at the grandiose & misguided manias that drive men. Certainly a literature course could spend a lot of time analyzing it.

A masterpiece.