Rating: 
Summary: The only readable Faulkner I've come across
Review: I've tried The Sound and the Fury, and I've tried Absolom, Absolom, but his thick, unweildy prose is just too much for my short, little span of attention. But this book. This book I liked. A very good story, and written in a nice, easy style. I don't know how old he was when he wrote it, but it seems more mature, like he's less eager to impress, and more interested in just telling a good story. Anyway, I liked it.
JS
Rating:
Summary: apotheosis of cool
Review: If in the ever churning wastes of time you are confronted with a book
that speaks to you, says out loud and fast, Doug, I have no
punctuation and no plot but only earth and blood and endless,
fascinating permutations on the futility of the past and what it means
to wander through Mississippi when the wisteria is in full scent, you
have heard this book calling you to examine the abject passivity of
Lena Grove, the violence of Joe Christmas, the possibilities of the
run on sentence, the fruit of generations of bitchery and abomination
(Ed. note- not gratuitous profanity- it's integral to the book), the
chances of winning some silly contest, and the genius that wrote
everything he did. It's the place to start on Faulkner.
Rating:
Summary: "The soul in conflict with itself"
Review: In my opinion, the triple narrative of the novel(Lena, Hightower, Christmas), while it may be important to balanced structure of LiA, is superseded by passionate portrayal of Joe Christmas. The life of Lena, and characters connected with her (Burch, Bunch), represent what is usually taken as a norm of realistic novel. It is skillfully written, and, it seems to me, Faulkner intended it to serve as a bridge to "average" people and to end with the message of hope. Hightower is especially important to Faulkner as an example of wasted life, effectively destroyed by history's grip on minds and hearts of descendants of the Civil War's losers. He is depicted with air of aridity-sexually humiliated and deserted from wife, socially ostracized with innuendos of homosexuality and "nigger loving".Ironically, we may say that grand finale of his life and fulfilment come with his unselfish, but unsuccessful attempt to save Christmas from Grimm, even taking on himself accusation of homosexuality (he claims that Joe was with him in the time of death).In masterfully drawn final agony death liberates him, but in whirlpool of recent (Joe, Grimm) and Civil War (burden of history again) images. A few factors combine to ruin his life (history, Calvinist heritage, hypersensitivity-and also attempts (futile) for social and racial justice). He is a figure of great pathos, especially faulknerian in sentiment of "lost" life and inability to achieve a fulfilled life (all Faulkner's "positive" characters are childless, unable to cope with women, socially inferior). In the preliminary draft Faulkner intended Joe to be killed at the age of 33-the age of Christ.Three, maybe four strands are interwoven in the case of Christmas.First, there is a christian symbolism-his initials J.C., preliminary 33-ys death. Second, he has mythic prechristian attributes (follows life path of an archetypal hero: has no knowledge of his parents and ancestry, during his life has to face many mythical obstacles and impediments in his search for identity, at the end is dismembered like Dionysus, and, in final scene of mutilation and castration, his "triumphant" face that will haunt his pursuers, reminisces on "triumphant", or, risen Christ.) He is too violent to be purely christian figure-his "victimness" combines pagan and christian mythology. Third strand-he's like a hero of popular melodrama (young, handsome, unhappy, cursed, everyone against him, including himself.) Fourth-time and place:he is a victim of racism, social phenomenon that is shown as an abstraction, but a deadly one (Joe looks "white", probably is-his constant reminding that he may have negro blood is only a sign of his self-destructive impulses; Faulkner deliberately didn't clear this question, which is the main tragic theme of the novel. At the end, he is killed not because he had killed Joanna (another social pariah), but because he had slept with a white woman.) He doesn't know who he is (and I think that Faulkner in Japan, in Nagano, said:" To be deprived of self-identity, not to know who you are, and to know that you will never know, is the worst condition that can happen to man."), and suspicions that he might have partially negro blood, the fact he almost physiologically hates- all this makes him hate himself most intensely. The very fact that he, as a white racist, may be, at least partially, the hated object, leads him, step by step, to self-destruction (his end is in fact suicide-although he has a revolver, he doesn't want to use it.) To conclude: Faulkner's intention with his main character was to put not white racism, but what we could call convulsions and victimization in the struggle for self-identity.Faulkner's main hero cannot escape circumstances, cannot find liberation in universal human values, cannot escape his maniacal obsession with racial identity. Irreducible to social, psychological & psychoanalytical explanations (however alluring and "natural" they may seem, especially because of naturalist setting), Christmas is the only mythic hero in modern literature, by far surpassing Joyce's Bloom and Mann's Moses and Joseph. While Lena and Hightower are indispensable for overall balance of the novel, they're minors compared to Joe. To state in even more reductionist and extreme manner: at once murderer and victim, hero and villain, black and white, Christ and Devil-Christmas *is* "Light in August".
Rating: 
Summary: Deep South, Brooding
Review: Lena Grove, who is pregnant, is making her way towards the town of Jefferson, searching for Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. Burch had promised to "send for her later" when he upped sticks.
Meanwhile, in the town, dark events are unfolding, particularly with regard to Joe Christmas. Lena's arrival coincides with horrifying occurrences. Will her search be successful, and what will Christmas's fate be?
This is a brooding, dark, multi-layered novel concerning injustice, evil and prejudice. It's hardly an edifying portrait of the deep South in the inter-war years, yet it felt real. The writing style might best be described as elaborate, even heavy -no surprise for anyone who has read other works by Faulkner. It's not an easy read - the prose is very dense most of the time. Certainly it will not be to everyone's taste.
I thought that Faulkner's approach was justified given that he seemed to want to explore the psychology of his characters in some depth, whilst creating a feeling of claustrophobia and tension. He moves the story along by linking the personal histories of the characters, showing how their pasts shaped them and in turn shape how they react to the present.
It's true to say that at times I thought it was over-written. Nonetheless, once I got used to the feeling and atmosphere I think Faulkner wanted to create, I was carried along (to make up for the over-writing, the best sections were written with great power and insight).
G Rodgers
Rating:
Summary: This is my favorite book of all time.
Review: LiA is amazing. I loved this book and recommend it to everyone. It is thought provoking and fast paced. Faulkner's writing style is delicious. LiA raises questions not only of race and morals, but of religion and the nature of Christ himself. What if Christ were merely a man? Indeed a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Literature - a Great American Novel
Review: LiA is one of my favorite books of all time; it's readable literature- entertaining as well as thought-provoking. It's hard to find a book like this one; it's worth your time and money to take it in.
Rating:
Summary: A panarama of the Old South
Review: Light in August actually follows 3 loosely connected stories, Lena searching for rhe father of her to be born child, Hightower, the disgraced preacher of God and Joe Christmas, which is the common thread between all of the characters. Like other Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury comes to mind), the reader needs a degree of patience since with continued reading, his qestions will eventually be answered. In this lays the only flaw of the book - a synopsis is given where the reader knows what happens, leading Faulkner to flash back to the details almost immedaitely following. Among the themes one may be able to read into is the representation of man by Joe Christmas. The fact that he MAY have black blood and his death at Christ's age of death may question whether Faulkner saw him as a Christ- like figure and what would happen if Christ had arrived in the South in the early 20th century (after all there is some question whether Christ was actually dark skinned, which would be read as having black blood in 1930 Mississippi).At times a bit long winded, nevertheless a interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner's Best
Review: Light In August is America's finest novel about the South, and the struggle to come to grips with the entire country's racial problems. It tells the story of four very different characters:
Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman, searching for the deadbeat father of her child; Byron Bunch, the man she meets in her search who falls in love with her; Rev. Hightower, Bunch's friend, an ostracized cleric; and Joe Christmas, a man of dubious racial origin. Faulkner tells each story with the ease of a great storyteller. He moves the story back and forth in time, although the actual time elapsed from the beginning to the end of the novel is a few short days. Each of the stories intersects the others and a complete world is woven from their details. Lena is looking for her "fiancée", a man named "Brown" who left her as soon as he heard the "happy news." She is capable of enormous perseverance and is determined to make a family for herself and her child. Against all odds, she seems destined to succeed. Byron is biding time, waiting for his life to begin. His love of Lena gives him his purpose in life, and starts him on the journey to becoming a man. Rev. Hightower is biding his time, also, waiting for his life to end. It ended many years before when he lacked the courage to help or deal with a wife who went insane. He finds his salvation at the novels end when he finds the courage to try to help someone, even though he fails. And Joe Christmas - a man who pretends to be have black blood in him, and lives in both the white and black worlds. Most reviewers mistakenly believe that he is half-black. In fact, his father is described as a foreigner, and may or may not be black. It doesn't matter because Joe has come to believe that he is part black. The perception has more reality than the truth. The novel streaks through the central events of the book - including sexual depravity and a gruesome murder. There are dozens of minor characters who have more life to them than in a dozen novels of a Grishom or King. This book should be read and re-read - just for the fun of it. It's a great book because it is a page-turner, a romance, a character study, a ... well, a great read!
Rating:
Summary: An epic of knowledge and ignorance
Review: LIGHT IN AUGUST is one of Faulkner's knottier works, layered with braided plotlines and themes. It could just as well be a work of science fiction, set as it is in a post-apocalyptic world, where cast-up survivors stagger about in a frightful disconnect, trying to reconstruct meaning and a code to live by. Of course, they are doing a terrible job. This is no nuclear winter, though. It is the rural south of the early 20th century where the Civil War happened yesterday and the failures of Reconstruction continue to take their toll. The plot lines are not easily sorted out for a capsule account. It is tempting to begin, "At the heart of the book . . .," but Faulkner would be the first to respond, "how do you know with any certainty that that is the nucleus, that is the real truth?" The tattered social code that these people have snatched from the fire of the Civil War comes down to a few "givens"- white is supreme, black is untenable, men must be strong leaders unbent by lesser forces, women must be virgins until they marry and true to their husbands, and murder, especially of white by black, must not go unpunished. Truth is at once harshly stolid and easily muddied. The author devotes the greatest amount of energy to the grizzly murder of a spinster, ostracized by her Mississippi community by virtue of her Yankee heritage and her social ministerings to the black community. That she is white and the accused is assumed to have partial black heritage gives the white populace something with which it can define itself, a fierce, righteous drive to avenge the death. Faulkner sorts out the histories of the players to determine why they have become involved, the truth of their individual existences as well as their knowledge in respect to the case. Weaving in and out, like a stupid Cassandra, is the very pregnant Lena, who begins the book by pursuing on foot her missing boyfriend out of Alabama, and continues to pursue him even while it is obvious he is a lost cause, even when there is someone else willing to assume responsibilities. Faulkner's use of language and symbolism is breathtaking. This is worthy reading, but do be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Seventy-five plus years later, it causes you to ask the disturbing question, have we come far enough away from the cave of dark violence and ignorance he depicts?
Rating:
Summary: An epic of knowledge and ignorance
Review: LIGHT IN AUGUST is one of Faulkner's knottier works, layered with braided plotlines and themes. It could just as well be a work of science fiction, set as it is in a post-apocalyptic world, where cast-up survivors stagger about in a frightful disconnect, trying to reconstruct meaning and a code to live by. Of course, they are doing a terrible job. This is no nuclear winter, though. It is the rural south of the early 20th century where the Civil War happened yesterday and the failures of Reconstruction continue to take their toll. The plot lines are not easily sorted out for a capsule account. It is tempting to begin, "At the heart of the book . . .," but Faulkner would be the first to respond, "how do you know with any certainty that that is the nucleus, that is the real truth?" The tattered social code that these people have snatched from the fire of the Civil War comes down to a few "givens"- white is supreme, black is untenable, men must be strong leaders unbent by lesser forces, women must be virgins until they marry and true to their husbands, and murder, especially of white by black, must not go unpunished. Truth is at once harshly stolid and easily muddied. The author devotes the greatest amount of energy to the grizzly murder of a spinster, ostracized by her Mississippi community by virtue of her Yankee heritage and her social ministerings to the black community. That she is white and the accused is assumed to have partial black heritage gives the white populace something with which it can define itself, a fierce, righteous drive to avenge the death. Faulkner sorts out the histories of the players to determine why they have become involved, the truth of their individual existences as well as their knowledge in respect to the case. Weaving in and out, like a stupid Cassandra, is the very pregnant Lena, who begins the book by pursuing on foot her missing boyfriend out of Alabama, and continues to pursue him even while it is obvious he is a lost cause, even when there is someone else willing to assume responsibilities. Faulkner's use of language and symbolism is breathtaking. This is worthy reading, but do be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Seventy-five plus years later, it causes you to ask the disturbing question, have we come far enough away from the cave of dark violence and ignorance he depicts?
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