A Death in the Family

by James Agee

book data

1,365 ratings, 3.91 average rating, 202 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		33%
4		35%
3		22%
2		6%
1		1%

edit

published

July 28th 1998 by Vintage (first published 1957)

details

Paperback, 320 pages

setting

Knoxville, Tennessee (United States)

literary awards

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1958)

isbn

0375701230 (isbn13: 9780375701238)

description

Forty years after its original publication, Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. In its lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's…more

find at: Amazon • Swap (1) • WorldCat • more options…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

new topic
discuss this book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Chicks On Lit: The Last Letter	689	395	52 minutes ago
The Next Best Boo...: * Your Latest Splurge	8332	10999	13 hours, 46 min ago
Chicks On Lit: what are you reading.	3415	3805	16 hours, 39 min ago

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Pulitzer Winners: Fiction & Novels

82 books | 757 voters

Best Books of the 20th Century

2208 books | 10532 voters

More lists...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,492)

sort: default (?) | date
filters: all | text-only

Aug 11, 2007

Nick rated it:

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: those who appreciate the hidden mystery of the emotional moment

This isn't a difficult book but it's certainly not traditional. There is practically no profluence beyond the natural causality of a single incident--the death of a good man. In other words, there are no surprises, nothing is coming that you don't already know, no real "narrative" reason to turn the page.

Rather, the book is held together by a string of incredibly detailed descriptions of highly emotional moments in one family's life. The vivid inner lives of the characters...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

2 comments

May 02, 2008

Monica rated it:

(review of isbn 0553270117)

bookshelves: special-books

Read in April, 2008

recommended to Monica by: mom and dad

original note: This book so far is giving me some comfort.
It's on a list of the 101 best novels since 1923 http://www.time.com/time/2005/... that I haven't studied yet, but think it may sit better with me than the 1001 previously discussed.

This Bantam edition I guess I've had since 1983. It says it's the 13th printing and portions were previously published in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar: all publications worthy of such incredi...more original note: This book so far is giving me some comfort.
It's on a list of the 101 best novels since 1923 http://www.time.com/time/2005/... that I haven't studied yet, but think it may sit better with me than the 1001 previously discussed.

This Bantam edition I guess I've had since 1983. It says it's the 13th printing and portions were previously published in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar: all publications worthy of such incredible writing. One half to three quarters of the way through, I felt like I was reading an outstanding classic like F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is The Night", or something the caliber of a great Eugene O'Neill play, with brilliant dialogue, insightful , contradictory thoughts which juxtaposed character's spoken words and actions. Agee portrays guilty sibling behavior as only an older brother could with an annoying younger sister. He painfully shows the cruelty inflicted by children on other children; the alienation, insecurity and loneliness even a six year old is able to experience. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" struck me like a bolt of lightning when I was 15 or 16, and this is no less a masterpiece. Agee's understanding of normal human existence is unparalleled. The book takes place over the span of only forty-eight hours, including a few flashback inserts the editors printed in italics, with a clarity and resonance that will be very hard to forget. This book must be an example of a writer"showing" instead of "telling". It felt so real you could have been hearing a brilliantly written screenplay or watching an excellent stage presentation. The different character's religious zeal, cynical doubts, loving compassion and simplicity shown off the page. What a memory Agee had for every detail and nuance of those forty-eight hours which changed his life forever. The family's tragedy was illustrated at a "snails" pace, in the best sense of the word, each perception, thought, action and word carefully considered and honestly portrayed as only Agee could. His experience as a young boy resonated on these pages. The difficulties he had with his sister, loosing his dad, his relationships with his relatives, made him the great writer he became. I could have read sooner but whenever you get to a book is it's proper place in time and I'm grateful finally found my proper time for this masterpiece.

post script 6/15/08 father's day- I don't know if I'm up for 615 pages for the revised edition because I was so impressed with the first -- it was short and "sweet". That much of a commitment to Agee's writing could be worth it but there are so many film reviews and essays to read, too. On this father's day i salute my dad who worked with Agee at Time and tells the story better than I about having to sit on him to calm him down at a very short Christmas party because there was a woman in the research department (not my mom) with whom Agee was extremely upset; whether because she was ignoring him or was involved with someone else - don't know. Agee, thought normally calm became unglued and enraged and was evidently extremely fired up on alcohol.(less)

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

5 comments

Sep 20, 2008

Julie rated it:

bookshelves: best-of-2009, classic, mastercraft---brilliant-writing, read--2009, us--historical

Read in November, 2009

When I told Brendan that I'd finished "A Death in the Family" he asked me how it made me feel. Not, "What did you think of the book?", but "How did it make you feel?"

I felt those hideous, unspeakable emotions that arise when contemplating the death of a loved one. I felt the suffocating sorrow knowing the worst was yet to come for the characters: after the ceremonies end and friends and family slip away to return to their lives, you are left alone and t...more When I told Brendan that I'd finished "A Death in the Family" he asked me how it made me feel. Not, "What did you think of the book?", but "How did it make you feel?"

I felt those hideous, unspeakable emotions that arise when contemplating the death of a loved one. I felt the suffocating sorrow knowing the worst was yet to come for the characters: after the ceremonies end and friends and family slip away to return to their lives, you are left alone and the shock wears away to leave you hopeless and bereft. And yet I felt also the solid hope that those left behind can pick up the remnants of their lives and move on, that healing will come.

What I treasured about this novel is its simplicity and purity. There is no plot in a traditional sense, no build-up of events culminating in a conclusion, only a story as real and old as time. Although Agee died before the book's completion and its contents were pieced together, I didn't feel that anything was left unwritten. There was a completeness to the characters' experiences, the narrative ending just as Mary's life without Jay was really beginning.

The details left a profound impression, as well. The fixation on the manner and details of Jay's death was so natural - we are wired to sort out and categorize events in our attempt to understand and control. Mary's embarrassment over wishing Aunt Hannah to stay with her rather than her own mother acknowledged that shouting at her half-deaf mom would have turned grief into a farce; the discussion about hot toddies versus whiskey neat, the smell of Mary's breath as she explained Jay's death to his children - so many mundane events take on a surreal glow in the light of tragedy.

Agee fit as naturally into the minds of young Rufus and his little sister as those of the adults. Rufus's experience at the hands of stupid and cruel children and the pleasure he takes as his status rises in the glamour of his father's accident; little Catherine's inability to grasp the forever of her daddy's disappearance from her life; the bickering and boredom of two young kids trapped in a home in mourning- all delivered sincerely through the eyes and words of children, heartbreaking but not melodramatic.

A beautiful book that's probably been the bane of many high school junior English classes- better left for a quiet time and quiet reflection when one isn't feeling quite so invincible.

(less)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

5 comments

Nov 11, 2009

Chris rated it:

bookshelves: pulitzer-prize-winners, read-in-2009

Read in December, 2009

recommended to Chris by: Julie

Heartbreaking and raw. I don't believe I've ever read a book or seen a movie that so realistically portrays a death in the family and what every single member goes through; the weaving of conversations and thoughts between the characters, and being an outsider looking in, some of the conversations and things that were said to Mary and the children. People think they are doing good and mean well, when actually they are saying all the wrong things. And that priest, I wanted to kick him out the doo...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

4 comments

May 19, 2007

Lisa Vegan rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: fiction, novels, orphaned-and-quasi-orphaned-kids, reviewed, top-100

Owns a copy — Read in November, 1971

I read this book for my fall freshman year of college, for an English lit course, and it made a huge impression on me. I think I’ve reread it only once, and that was decades ago, but it remains a powerful influence.

I think that this book does a better job than any other I’ve read of communicating the innocence of young children and of portraying how their perceptions of events can be different from those of adults.

The writing style is lovely and the book is very well ...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

Oct 19, 2007

Brian Lane rated it:

(review of isbn 0448068613)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: anyone

Agee was working with so many different points of view, with being inside the psyche of adults and children, struggling through the depth and complexity of their thoughts and feelings. He must not have been able to keep at the intensity required to pull this book from the innermost recesses of his soul for long periods. And even with its richness and complexity, I feel that he was probably still working on the prose - there is a longing incompleteness to the book. There is a genuineness about...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Oct 22, 2009

Tío Steve rated it:

It is impossible for me to inject any levity into a review of A Death in the Family. No “headline” here, as has been my wont in other reviews. Yes, the pretext for the novel is a death in the family, but the subject matter is the experience of life.

The best captured experience of life here is from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy in the context of the untimely death of his father. If someone were to ask me what it was like to be a little boy, I would refer them to this text....more It is impossible for me to inject any levity into a review of A Death in the Family. No “headline” here, as has been my wont in other reviews. Yes, the pretext for the novel is a death in the family, but the subject matter is the experience of life.

The best captured experience of life here is from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy in the context of the untimely death of his father. If someone were to ask me what it was like to be a little boy, I would refer them to this text. The reason is this. I myself have only a hazy recollection of the experience of childhood. Set piece images of various scenes. James Agee, however, transported me back into the midst of it all. It was a tremendously affecting experience.

Rufus explores his dead father's morsechair. He sticks his finger in the ashtray. Retrieves it with a smudge of ash on it. Looks at it. Licks it off. It tastes of darkness.

That passage, among others, required me to set the book aside and collect myself before driving on. It is a sad thing to admit that one's own personal recollection of childhood had to be informed by another, an author long dead.

Nor is it necessary to be male for the book to have its affect. I have had the pleasure to discuss it with thoughtful women. The experience of early childhood is not so much a gender specific one. Before the injection of hormones forever divides the various genders, the experience of early childhood is a more universal one than the experience of later life.

This is an extraordinary novel. A transforming one, and—I must use that word again—transporting one. It does not transport you to some exotic time or place. It transports you to an early era in your very own life.

Organized religion takes a hit in this text. If you are one who cannot abide that, perhaps you should leave this novel alone.

I am informed now that after serious research, an academic has put together a text that allegedly more closely approximates James Agee's intentions for the novel in its final form. The major alteration is the removal of the initial section with its portrayal of Knoxville prior to the father's death. Apparently, the 1938 publisher lifted this section whole from another work entirely and inserted here. That section was the only defect that I discerned in the original version. It did not belong. For once, my judgment was astute. I look forward to reading the renovated version, which I understand is considerably altered in other respects, also.

Do not let the title, the superficially perceived subject matter of the novel, put you off. Do not miss the experience of this.(less)

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Aug 26, 2009

Lauren rated it:

bookshelves: 2009-summer-book-reading

Read in August, 2009

A death in the family by james Agree is a book about a family that experiences a tragic death ( as explained in the tittle). when Jay Folit gets a call in the middle of the night from his brother saying that his dad is in the hospital. Jay can tell the brother is sober and it could be a false alert, when jay goes down to see his brother he soon finds out that his father is fine he leaves in a huff then gets hit by a car on his way home and killed. After this the brother and the family all are de...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Jul 24, 2009

Debbie Nance rated it:

Read in January, 2008

There are good reads that satisfy and are thoughtful and have lovely writing. And then there are the truly great reads that leave the reader longing to start the book over and reread it just as soon as one turns to the final paragraph. A Death in the Family is a great read.

The story is very simple. Jay Follet, the dad and the husband in the family, receives a call from his brother that his father is very ill and is near death. Jay goes to be with his father and on his return is kille...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Feb 08, 2009

Cynthia rated it:

Read in February, 2009

Agee's book is about loss, or should I say LOSS. The main character suffers the loss of the most important, or at least one of, the most important people in her life. She leans on the love of her family and God but even with those loves she's still essentially alone and lost in pain. Unfortunately most of us old folks have weathered such losses and gotten through them somehow. It's hard to let the loss make you a better, more loving, a stronger person but the only other alternative is to bec...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Aug 03, 2009

Lisa rated it:

Read in July, 2009

I enjoyed this book very much. I've been digging into old classics and this is one of my finds. While this can be a sad topic on the surface it's well done in it's character and setting development. I felt I could have been right beside the characters, living among them, as the story unfolded. There was so much detail but it kept my interest. I got very attached to the characters. Also, there is a very young boy, Rufus, who is a very focal part of the story. I thought the perspective James Ag...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Jul 08, 2009

Skstiles612 rated it:

bookshelves: adult

Read in July, 2009

This is the story of a father’s untimely death and the family’s reaction to it. At the beginning of this story you immediately know that this is a very close family. When the father is suddenly killed in an automobile accident we are taken on the journey the family must take as they realize the immediate and future changes to their family, their feelings and life. Agee did a great job of bringing the reader along. I felt the pain and grief due to the descriptive and emotional way this w...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Mar 03, 2009

Hope rated it:

Read in March, 2009

Every once in awhile you happen upon a book written in delicious prose sweet and rich as a summer-ripe nectarine. Occasionally you pick up a book that leaves you gasping from its exposition of the human soul in all its stark blinding-white realness. It's next to never that you find a book that has both. James Agee's A Death in the Family is deserving of its many praises, "a classic", Pulitzer prize winning, the list goes on. The story is not a happy one, as the title would suggest. But...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

2 comments

Jun 03, 2009

Laura Rucker rated it:

Read in January, 2005

A surprising revelationary book for me. I had never even heard of James Agee until I was about 24 years old and a friend of mine said he felt like little Rufus from "A Death in the Family". I said, "Who?" and "What?". My friend immediately brought me his battered old copy that he had read in many times of need. I started this book 3 times and kept putting it back down to read something else. The first section of the book, I think I found aloof and disjointed at...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Jan 28, 2010

Katy rated it:

Read in January, 2010

This was hard to read both emotionally and intellectually. I felt a portion of the weight of death on the family and cried several times. Even after I put it down, I felt like I was grieving. It left me feeling that anyone in my family could die at any time. On the other hand, it also left me feeling grateful that my husband and I are both alive and able to care for our children.

The writing is poetic, which is both beautiful and difficult to understand. It was published posthu...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Jul 09, 2009

Cynthia rated it:

Read in September, 2007

I did a paper on this book for Mr. Forssman in high school. He was my favorite teacher of all time. This is the passage of this book that stuck with me all those years:
(p. 334, Uncle Andrew to Rufus:) "Right when they began to lower your father into the ground, into his grave, a cloud came over and there was a shadow just like iron, and a perfectly magnificent butterfly settled on the coffin, just rested there, right over the breast, and stayed there, just barely making his wings brea...more

Like this review? yes

1 comment

Jun 01, 2009

Cindy rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I started reading the prologue to find a particular quote and then went ahead and read the whole thing. I thought I read it long ago, but I had it confused with Look Homeward Angel.

The novel is often poetic and very good with sights, sounds and smells. Agee has a great ear for dialogue and a good sense of how people interact under pressure. I think if he'd lived he would have edited the novel pretty hard, and I think Agee's early death accounts for the reverence this book is accorde...more

Like this review? yes

5 comments

Feb 03, 2009

John Struloeff rated it:

Read in February, 2009

This one grew on me. The writing is very careful, the pace slow, and after a few chapters I began to get impatient. But there is a haunting quality to the writing, and a curious cumulative effect of the images and relationships. A plot twist about a third of the way into the story helped keep my interest, too. The point-of-view rotates among numerous characters, making me think of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying or Russell Banks's The Sweet Hereafter, where the story centers around a single death ...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Jul 24, 2009

Alex rated it:

Read in August, 2009

A very interesting read. This 300 page book covers a week in the life one family. Devoting this many pages to such little time means that the book is more like an in depth case study than a novel. There is little plot; the book is about the car accident and death of a father and its affect on the family in the immediate aftermath. However, Agee is able to keep his readers going by bravely delving into the psychological minutiae of grieving and stress reactions. You intimately understand ho...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Nov 18, 2009

Morgan F rated it:

(review of isbn 0553270117)

bookshelves: 1930s, classics, nfa-library

Read in November, 2009

Unfortunately, the old mean librarian wouldn't let me renew this book, so I didn't finish the last 100 pages. But I did enjoy what I read.

A Death in the Family, first of all, is very well written. The prose is very beautiful and complex. The story is somewhat slow-moving, and the plot was more of a character study than anything else. I did take me a few chapters though, to get all the characters straight, especially Ralph and Rufus, whom I would often confuse. I didn't really ha...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... Next »

recent status updates | recommend it | blog it

combine
other editions (20)

More editions...

trivia questions

1 trivia question

See trivia...

quotes from this book

"And no matter what, there's not one thing in this world *or* the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That's all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That's all. That's all that matters. It's all that matters because it's all that's possible. " — 3 people liked it

"How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for? Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it's almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember. And God knows he was lucky, so many ways, and God knows he was thankful. Everything was good and better than he could have hoped for, better than he ever deserved; only, whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn't what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart." — 2 people liked it

More quotes...