sgunther 's review for:

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

4.0

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I am not usually one to be impressed by sheer beauty of writing, by aesthetics of prose, but RPW's writing is gorgeous. (Okay, he wrote one of my all-time favorite poems, so I should have known that his way with words would come through in this novel.) All the King's Men oozes with a sense of place—but in the rhythm of the language itself more than in any explicit description. You can practically hear the narrator telling you his story in a low, slow drawl, and that's probably why it took me so long to read: you have to listen and mull over every sentence. There is quite a bit of plot action for a book that is so slow and meandering. The story is effective if not hugely memorable, and the characters are a bit problematic (is RPW sexist or is it just the narrator?), but that doesn't stop me from recommending it. This is a book you want to live in for a long, long time—and you will.