A Death in the Family (Vintage International)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.
On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.
"An utterly individual and original book...one of the most deeply worked out expressions of human feeling that I have ever read."--Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review
"It is, in the full sense, poetry....The language of the book, at once luminous and discreet...remains in the mind."--New Republic
"People I know who read A Death in the Family forty years ago still talk about it. So do I. It is a great book, and I'm happy to see it done anew."--Andre Dubus, author of Dancing After Hours and Meditations From A Moveable Chair
The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by James Agee about a family's reactions to the accidental death of the father. Published in 1957, the novel was praised as one of the best examples of American autobiographical fiction, and it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958. As told through the eyes of six-year-old Rufus Follet, the story emerges as an exploration of conflicts both among members of the family and in society. The differences between black and white, rich and poor, country life and city life, and, ultimately, life and death are richly depicted. Agee used contrasting narratives as a structural device to link the past and present; italicized passages describing the family's life before the fatal automobile accident are incorporated into the primary narrative of the crash and its immediate effects.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
A Death in the Family (Vintage International)
A Death in the Family (Vintage International),James Agee,Vintage,0375701230,Agee, James, 1909-1955,Boys,Classics,Fathers and sons,Fiction,Knoxville (Tenn.),Literary,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Literature: Classics,Traffic accident victims,Fiction / Literary,Modern fiction
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