Crumbs. I've been trying to read a bit more of the great modernist writers, but I found this really too opaque for my commuting brain; I got that there was a murder and long-lost siblings and racism and slavery and all that, and some interesting characterisation, but it was all a bit dense and none of the characters really all that attractive. ( Read more... )

Maybe it's a mistake to try reading stream-of-consciousness literature while on a transatlantic flight and over the subsequent days of jetlag (which has hit me much worse than usual on this trip), but I almost completely bounced off this book about a decaying family of the Old South (apart from the third of the four sections, the one narrated by ( Read more... )

Continuing my occasional dips into classic literature with this intense stream-of-consciousness tale of a poor Mississippi family, fulfilling their wife and mother's dying wish to be buried in her inconveniently distant home town. The family dynamics are weird and understated, and the time sequencing is occasionally jarring between the dozen or so ( Read more... )