Reviews

• Good for teens

  Great book for teens

• Best book ever

  This is one of the most touching books I've ever read. Agee has the greatest knack of talking in the language of the character under examination. His attention to minute detail brings the picture of what the characters see and do and feel in a way that I find rather profound. The language is never coarse or overly broad. You never have to guess what a sentence is conveying, it is so literate yet to the point. For instance, Agee names all the mourners, just the way a child would who was watching them pass by one by one, and creates an atmosphere of the burden of sadness but not understanding why the burden is put forth. Young Rufus' character and personality come across as the most touching of all. He is a young boy starting to mature but still captured in childhood, and trying to understand people and their behaviors toward him, trying to trust but knowing and feeling puzzled by the things people do to him to destroy that trust. And learning he can't trust himself either. Everyone can relate to his trials in this regard. All the folks who populate this book are folks you'd want to know more about. But the most touching aspect of all is the way Agee lets you know just how the death of one impacts so many, so very many others; how it hurts, how it forces growth, how much sadness it generates. I couldn't put it down. And my tears still flow thinking about it.

• The children's view; in spite of the gravity of the event, you will giggle, you will chuckle!

  Characters, situation, and plot are the usual priorities critics use when discussing a novel. Structure often barely gets a look in, which is what makes James Agee’s A Death in the Family such an unusual book. The entire narrative consists of one event – the death in a car crash of Jay Follet – the few hours before it, and its immediate aftermath. The event is told by several different characters; Jay himself, his wife Mary, her Aunt Hannah, her brother Andrew, her two children Rufus and Catherine, and for a brief few passages, her parents. These aren’t different versions of the same event they are different points of view. The narrative keeps running, it’s just being run in relays by different individuals, and it gives the reader the impression that everything is happening in ‘real’ time, and its only at the end of the book where the time needed for the various funeral arrangements is speeded up in the last fifty or so pages. Because it feels like what we’re reading is happening in real time it’s all the more frustrating to witness each event and emotion portrayed in fine detail, such as the what seems to be ‘crying of wolf’ by Jay’s drunken brother Ralph, and that Jay’s father is not at death’s door, and that the car journey in the early hours of the morning was never necessary in the first place. There are beautiful atmospherics. Part of the car journey involves taking a ferry. Jay is lucky…doesn’t have to wait long in the dark for the ferryman, but when they arrive on the other side of the river Jay sees there’s a farmer and his wife who’ve been waiting for hours, shouting in vain into the dark for the ferryman, with their produce for a market for which they will now be late. It’s this frustration and excruciating sensation which the reader feels as every component of the narrative as it is revealed to us. Tiny details involving the consumption and preparation of eggs and hot milk by Mary before Jay’s useless car journey. Jay’s death is no spoiler because its all in the blurb on the back of the book! There are two elements which serve to counterpoint the misery of the experience of the adults. The first is the fascinating and unusual insertion into the narrative of three internal monologues (in italics) in Rufus’ voice. The first in advance of Part 1, the second at the end of Part 1, and the third at the end of Part 2 (there are 3 parts in total). Agee’s novel was published posthumously and these additions were found with the main manuscript – but with no indication from the author as to exactly where they might belong in the narrative. The second element which in my view gives this novel a sky-high lift to the reader’s enjoyment, is the events seen through the eyes of the two children. So often in literature the child’s view confirms to the reader how awful it is being a child. We get that, but what we also are given is a view which is of a dimension so different from the adult that I guarantee that in spite of the gravity of events you will giggle, you will chuckle!

• Excellent if depressing portrait

  Agee wrote a fine book about the disruption an event has on a collection of people, especially the children. Not light reading, but one of those books that give you a glimpse into the human condition. A work of art.

• This is writing of superior quality. Through the detailed exposition of the events ...

  Why hadn't I heard of this man? This is writing of superior quality. Through the detailed exposition of the events surrounding the death of one man in a car accident, and the impact it has on his family, Agee pierces the heart of the human condition. Such simple, achingly moving and precise prose resonates with the depth of a large bell softly struck.

• Good book!

  I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories about the dynamics within a family following a death. Rufus comes across as a sympathetic character to me.

Purchase links