This is easily Faulkner's masterpiece. I've read it a thousand times, at least, and I always find something new. The characters are beautifully detailed, and the plot is full of Faulkner's trademark twists and turns. It's not a casual Sunday read, but it's well worth the time. If you're a Faulkner fan, you won't be disappointed.

I decided to read "As I Lay Dying" as a follow up to my recent first experience with Faulkner, "The Sound and the Fury." Neither book was an easy read (actually, both were downright difficult), but for reasons I can't quite explain both were also compulsively, almost obsessively readable. "As I Lay Dying" was probably the more accessible of the two, although once again the story is told through the eyes of multiple highly subjective and sometimes unreliable narrators. The choice to present the story in this way makes a relatively straightforward plot more challenging, but it also makes the characters come alive: we see each member of the Bundren family from within and from without; we look on both as a detached neighbor offended by the stink of a rotting corpse, and as a passionate son or daughter struggling to cope with the death of a mother and the odious task of transporting her body 40 miles by wagon under the worst possible conditions.

Ultimately, then, the story is seen and felt and experienced rather than told, and what we see, piece by piece, is a macabre, darkly comic tragedy; an epic journey from the deep countryside of Faulkner's South to a graveyard in Jefferson, Mississippi. To me the title of the book, while arguably a misnomer, is apt: as Faulkner says, death is a function of the mind more so than a phenomenon of the body, and Addie Bundren, although buzzards are circling her coffin, is not truly dead to her family until they can fulfill their promise to her and lay her to rest in Jefferson. But don't think this is a family motivated to endure terrible hardships only out of devotion to a lost loved one. Each member of the family has his or her own personal concerns seething just below the surface, and each makes the trip to Jefferson for his or her own reasons: some hypocritical, some purely selfish, some sincere.

As noted by Cleanth Brooks, the surface of the Bundren's life shows squalor, crassness, selfishness, and stupidity, but beneath outward appearances there are depths of passion and poetry almost terrifying in their power. The very drabness of the surface guarantees the sincerity of the passion below, because these people are not rhetoricians. Accordingly, the basic issue presented by this dichotomy between the inner and outer lives of the characters is probably as simple as this: are we expected to laugh or cry over the Bundren's exploits? Both are possibilities. Faulkner leaves it up to us to decide, and to me that's perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the novel.

So there you have it: this is a tough one but incredibly worthwhile. As already advised by a helfpul review above, you just have to trust the storyteller and remember that even when something seems unexplained or unintelligible, (almost) everything will become clear by the end. I certainly didn't understand everything I was reading, especially while I was reading it, but I loved it nonetheless. Faulkner is a master of evoking a time and a place, and I believe he succeeded in his stated aim to create real people who can "stand up and cast a shadow." Great book.

I read this book about 20 years ago in high school and hated it. I just tried to read it again for a book club discussion. I thought that 20 years of life experience and growth may have changed my attitude toward this classic. It didn't. I made it half way through and decided to quit wasting my time. The characters are self-serving, and I just didn't care about them. The stream of consciousness style of writing is not my thing.

What is so interesting to me about this book is how simple the story is. Anse Bundren is the stubborn-old-goat of a father and husband who has promised his dying, and later deceased wife Addie that he will bury her in her home town of Jefferson when she dies.

"As I Lay Dying" recounts the death and then trip to Jefferson, one tragic mishap after the other, through the view points of the members of Bundren family and others associated with them. These first person accounts from the characters brilliantly reveal the rather gritty and mostly unfortunate existence of the Bundrens, which appears to be the point of the book even more than the story itself.

This is the type of novel that people have mixed feelings about. On its surface, this is an inherently unpleasant story about a rural family who loads up their wagon with the dead body of their wife and mother and head out on a long trek to bury her in her home town. The journey takes days and the corpse starts to rot. 10 year old Vardman, confused and grief stricken by the death of his mother, augers holes into the coffin so she can breathe (or escape?), inadvertently drilling holes into her face.

It's cringe inducing stuff.

Which begs the obvious question; why would anyone want to read this?

I read this novel, like a lot of other people I suppose, as a kind of self induced homework. Faulkner is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, and despite hearing that he was a tough read, I wanted to experience him for myself.

As I Lay Dying got under my skin. It is simultaneously repugnant and fascinating. I found the chapters immediately following the death of the mother to be the most haunting. Without the support of one another, each family member must deal with their grief in their own way. I was struck by the contradictions between the overwhelming sense of duty and self sacrifice that the characters are made to feel, and the overtly selfish acts and manipulation that is apparent throughout. As the novel unfolds the reader comes to realize that there are many family secrets below the surface.

Much is made of Faulkner's style of writing. Personally, I'm a big fan of the use of multiple narratives. The multiple perspectives provide fascinating insight into the characters and events (some more coherent than others). The stream of consciousness style of writing can be a challenge for the reader. There is little effort made to explain who the characters are in relation to one another, or (in some cases) what is actually going on. Each chapter is, for the most part, a snapshot of what a character is thinking at any given time. The narrative is helped along by the voices of non family members who provide the most reliable observations of the families plight from the outside, looking in.

This novel is not recommended reading for the `Chicken Soup for the Soul' crowd. This is an unflinching, and uncompromisingly cynical novel; Disturbing, complex, and haunting. It's worth reading, if you like that sort of thing.