Just read it again from an author's perspective. An amazing, mind-boggling work, and the iconic Point of View and first person lesson for all authors. Faulkner exhibits myriad different characters all with their unique voices and POVs on a shared experience. ( )

Overrated rubbish. ( )

Faulkner is brilliant because he's a dangerous and mysterious writer - you can see the big themes bubble up subtle and slow from the language in his work. It wasn't until I was close to the end of the book that I realized that Cash is a Christ figure much like Thomas Sutpen represents (a Miltonian) Satan in "Absalom, Absalom". But Faulkner doesn't try to overwhelm with these themes - rather it's his language and the kaleidascopic chaos of his vision that renders truth about nature and humanity. ( )

The impoverished and somewhat mule-headed farmer Anse Bundren has promised his wife Addie that she can be buried in Jefferson, where her family comes from. But that's several days' wagon journey away, even when the rivers aren't in flood. Anse and his children set out nonetheless, coping with dangerous fords, burning barns, untreated injuries, and a whole host of other personal difficulties along the way.

The text switches around between the viewpoints of all the family members (including the deceased Addie) and a number of outsiders, each with their own distinctive style. It's often hard to follow what's going on and how people are connected to each other, and the language of some of the speakers is so deep in eccentricities of dialect that you have to read it three or four times, but despite that it's beautiful and strange and often deeply shocking.

Faulkner was obviously showing off when he wrote this (he later claimed — falsely — to have written it in six weeks without any revisions at all along the way), but you can't help being drawn in by most of his characters, appalling as they are, and sympathising with their problems. Good stuff, in small doses. ( )

Quinta novela de William Faulkner, Mientras agonizo es una de sus obras maestras y uno de los libros por los que sentía más aprecio. La escribió en seis frenéticas semanas, de madrugada, mientras trabajaba como bombero y vigilante nocturno de la central eléctrica de la Universidad de Mississippi. Relata la peripecia de una familia de blancos pobres, los Bundren, que recorren los parajes rurales del Sur con el cadáver de la esposa y madre en un ataúd para enterrarla en una parcela de su propiedad.