A long, enjoyable listen

This was the first Faulkner novel I attempted to read/listen since high school (when I thought I'd never read Faulkner again). With that said, I found this audiobook to be really excellent, and I plan to buy more of Faulkner's books. The reader was crisp, clear, and fit the book perfectly. Warning: this story/ plot line may be difficult to follow. If one is unfamiliar with the story, I recommend consulting some sort of plot chronology because it makes the listening experience a lot more enjoyable. (google University of Virginia and Absolom)

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62 people found this helpful

Narrator made the difficult easy.

I was nervous to read Faulkner having always heard how difficult his novels were. I was pleasantly surprised by the ease at which I was able to handle Absalom, Absalom! I give full credit for that to the excellent interpretation of Mr. Gardner. I never had trouble following the thoughts or complicated storyline of Faulkner's masterpiece. I now believe he is a MUST READ.

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41 people found this helpful

That is the substance of remembering

“That is the substance of remembering—sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel not mind, not thought: there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less; and its resultant sum is usually incorrect and false and worthy only of the name of dream.”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are probably more important, and perhaps more influential overall. However, as novels, I prefer Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!. In many ways this novel, for me, belongs next to Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Great Gatsby, and a handful of other as some of the greatest written art America has ever produced. It captures, without over-doing it, issues of race, class, the American Dream, the South, family, memory, etc., all packed inside a nearly perfect novel that slowly unwinds and unwraps through multiple, unreliable narrators. I will need to come back to this review. I may also need to come back to this novel. It is that good.

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37 people found this helpful

Audio Needed

For me having this book read to me as I read along w/ an actual book in hand made this book much easier to comprehend. I tried first to read the book, and then just listening to the audio book~I needed to do both. The more you listened, the easier this story was to follow. You get pulled in by the author and the narrator.

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18 people found this helpful

Awesome Book

This book was a difficult but great read. Faulkner makes use of an interesting technique by jumping back and forth between the past and the present with many of the characters. By doing this he creates a patchwork of small bits of information that eventually come together as a whole piece. Although this creates a very unique read it also becomes hard to keep all the facts straight, but if you stick through to the end you will not be let down.

PS: The second time through is better

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17 people found this helpful

READ OTHER FAULKNER BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS ONE.

This novel is obviously deserving of it's reputation of a great and difficult novel. The technique, though, is one that almost rejects the careful reader, let alone the listener. When listening you have to abandon the normal approach, you have to sit and *focus*--hard. It's a serious undertaking, but it is incredibly rewarding to experience the melodic rhythm of this recording. It exposes the strength and weakness of the experimental language Faulkner utilized: the words melt away from narrative, wandering into a rolling meter, and it is incredibly hard to follow. I was not sure what was happening half the time until I listened to the audio while also reading the text. Faulkner is a master of prose, no question, but definitely read his other work first. _As I Lay Dying_, _Sound & Fury_, his collected short stories, etc.

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13 people found this helpful

Faulkner at his finest!

If you could sum up Absalom, Absalom! in three words, what would they be?

It is hard to say which of Faulkner's works is my favorite, but Absalom, Absalom! certainly ranks in the top three. Grover Gardner is wonderful as the narrator, too. Faulkner, of course, is not an easy read, but with time one can begin to understand the "flow" of Faulkner's writing. I think this Audible presentation is an excellent way to capture Faulkner's wonderful poetic voice. Highly recommended!

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13 people found this helpful

Outstanding All Around

I love Faulkner, and had tried to get through reading this book three times, all without success. The writing, while beautiful, is just so dense, and takes so much concentration to understand, that I plain ran out of steam each time. But I decided to give the audio book a try. My thinking was that maybe a narrator would interpret the writing, and give me a boost in understanding it all.
Unlike most of my plans and schemes, this one worked to perfection! Grover Gardner did a flat-out incredible job narrating. His tones, his inflections, his interpretations, were uniformly superb. With his help, the novel became comprehensible. I wasn't even aware when he hit the infamous 1300-plus-word sentence, it was all so smooth.
And what a novel! I hadn't known beforehand that this book is held in such esteem by Faulknerians, but it is, and justly so. It is breathtaking in scope and execution, nearly on a par with The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. And praise doesn't come higher than that.
Thank you, Grover Gardner, thank you Audible!

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9 people found this helpful

Faulkner's best

A terrific novel -- one of the finest written in America. And as a Southerner I have to salute the narrator. His accents weren't bad.

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9 people found this helpful

One of my favorites

This is my favorite William Faulkner book and one of my favorite books generally. I have read it myself and now as an audio. Narration is almost perfect, the book is masterful. The story keeps turning and turning and the fable reinvents itself as you get new perspectives and more details. Even having read it several years before, I had waited long enough to get the shock from the surprises, especially the last one. Its awesome. Spellbinding. If you love long sentences, this book is heaven. It feels like one long single sentence and thought. And it is something of an allegory for the South itself on the whole, but you can take it as just a good story of hard characters too. There are no other books like this, though it clearly inspired in part the good Watson legend by Peter Mathiesen, peaking with "Bone by Bone" which I also recommend. If you want more of this.

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7 people found this helpful