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Book Reviewed by:A complex, intense American novel of family from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, The Sound and the Fury has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, the novel explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart, this is a novel about lovelessness - ''only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?''
April Seventh, 1928.
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.
"Here, caddie." He hit. They went away across the pasture. I held to the fence and watched them going away.
"Listen at you, now." Luster said. "Aint you something, thirty three years old, going on that way. After I done went all the way to town to buy you that cake. Hush up that moaning. Aint you going to help me find that quarter so I can go to the show tonight."
They were hitting little, across the pasture. I went back along ...
2026 first quarter besties
...-is-happiness This is Happiness by Niall Willams Others I loved: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5150/the-sound-and-the-fury The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/17444/chain-gang-all-stars Chain Gang All-Stars by https://www.bookbrowse....
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/15/2026)
I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/21574/the-sound-and-the-fury The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. I'd read it many years ago but I'd forgotten how challenging it is. It's all stream-of-consciousness, first-person narration, and it can be hard to...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/8/2026)
I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5077/white-lies White Lies by Ann Bausum. It was very interesting and I'm looking forward to chatting with her next week. I'm about to finish Faulkner's https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/2...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/1/2026)
...week. I started White Lies for the same reason - the author Ann Bausum will be here for a Q & A in a few weeks, too. And after that I'll be rereading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner for review. (BookBrowse has a "throwback issue" coming up at the end of January which will focus on deep reading.) In audiobook format, I'm about hal...
-kim.kovacs
Faulkner's technique throughout is astonishing; the multi-layered storytelling is masterful, intricate, and utterly distinct. That said, The Sound and the Fury can be, for the reader, a profoundly challenging work. Because of this narrative complexity, the novel might require more than one reading to decipher (and a good search engine helps a lot, too). But that's one of the joys of reading this novel; the Compsons' story is a puzzle that readers are challenged to assemble...continued
Full Review
(717 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
William Faulkner's 1929 masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, is a work of modernist literature, and one of the best examples of stream-of-consciousness narrative ever written. This technique attempts to mimic the way a person's mind works, with one thought flowing into another, often sparked by an external stimulus that brings up a past event or sends thoughts spinning in another direction.
Faulkner uses this method of writing during the first three sections of the novel. One noteworthy aspect of the book is that the author employs multiple first-person perspectives to tell his story, each supplying a piece of the mosaic until the full picture is assembled. Also remarkably, each character's inner monologue is completely ...
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He who opens a door, closes a prison
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