Absalom, Absalom!

By: William Faulkner

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness.

Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy of ruthlessness and singleminded disregard for the human community.

©1986 Jill Faulkner Summers; 1993 Books on Tape, Inc.

Other reviews are spot on

This is your typical hard to read Faulkner. If you haven't read a Faulkner novel, you need to try. He uses half page long sentences. His novels are not like his short stories. Some novels like Light in August are not difficult to follow but quite a few are rough but that makes Faulkner who he is. The narrator was amazing. I cannot imagine his ability to keep up his flowing cadence, long sentence after long sentence. No narrator will ever compare on a Faulkner read.

Dirty Secrets

Tells the racial interactions of the plantation South. Mixed bloods having to decide what their identity is. Captured by Faulkner.

The South in all its profundity

An excellent reading of an extraordinarily beautiful tragedy. A masterpiece. Read with careful attention to emotional impact and clarity.

My First Dive into Faulkner

What about Grover Gardner’s performance did you like?

Grover Gardener wins awards for a reason - his narration is pitch perfect, he emotes the sense of place and character flawlessly. I am a real fan.

Any additional comments?

An excellent read of a classic Faulkner work. It will not be my last

Complex Bellum South Exploration

This has been called the greatest novel of the American South. Written in the mid-1930's it uses strong yet inconsistent and unreliable narratives to weave a story expressing the emotional underpinning of the Bellum South. The story attempts to express the essential underlying truths of the South in this period through several unreliable narrations.

Due to the multiple overlapping narratives, viewpoints, withholdings, and long complex sentences, this is a difficult novel. Perhaps not the best first Faulkner. In any case. although not at all essential to the story, I would recommend reading The Sound and the Fury (which predates and shares some characters) before Absalom, Absalom!

Although this is a good book, and I enjoyed it, I won't be adding it to the essentials I recommend to my daughter. It is a great story of the Bellum South for anyone interested in the South or the Bellum period.

Grover Gardner, as usual, is completely excellent.

Masterful reading of a masterpiece.

I went back and forth between the audio book and the paper copy and found the audio version much easier to understand. If you have been struggling with reading Faulkner, I cannot recommend listening to this reader more highly.

MUST READ!!

The greatest American modern novel ever written where the structure is consistent with its theme.

Faulkner’s best

Well read. Better heard than read. Always the right word at the right time. Do not listen with out a dictionary at hand.

this "must read" might be better to be read.

struggled to finish. very confusing. at the end, I still wasn't sure who Quinton was.

Incredibly moving

Though sometimes difficult to follow the story line, this is probably the best explanation of race in the South. The performer has a wonderful voice.