Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Sanctuary

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 5,031 ratings · 284 reviews

A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hardboiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake, who introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.

Paperback, The Corrected Text, 326 pages

Published December 6th 1993 by Vintage (first published 1931)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

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

Lists with This Book

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Best Southern Books

57th out of 335 books — 445 voters

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Best Southern Literature

148th out of 599 books — 1,403 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

May 05, 2013 Jonathon rated it 1 of 5 stars

OK, Im going to be honest and tell you how I feel about Faulkner.....Fuck Faulkner. No, seriously, fuck him! Im sorry, he's got a lot of street cred. but his books are slow and dull and do not capture the reader at all within the first chapter (I have the attention span of a fish). This is ground for dismissal on my part. I tried reading this one and "The Sound and Fury" and even though they sounded awesome, within the first chapter I couldn't read anymore. His work is like nails on a chalkboard...more

7 likes · like · see review

Aug 21, 2007 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

This is considered one of Faulkner's more accessible books. He said he wrote it "just for the money". It is easier to read than many others. My problem with Faulkner is, he makes me feel dumb. I have trouble following his narratives, always have. Sometimes he can go for several pages of dialog between two characters and never refer to the identity of the person speaking. Is this deliberate? Anyway, I only had trouble with one part of this book. There is a character named Red who shows up and get...more

7 likes · like · see review

Nov 02, 2009 Hambonebro rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone interested in great writing

I am into writing my second book. The plot is semi-developed. I like it like that because depending on how the characters come to life a lot of flexibility is required. My stories
shape up best when I can inhabit the characters and identify with what makes them tick and as of last week things were moving slowly.

The reason may be because unlike my first one, “Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed” where one of the subjects featured was the world of hip hop, which I was completely familiar with from my work as...more I am into writing my second book. The plot is semi-developed. I like it like that because depending on how the characters come to life a lot of flexibility is required. My stories
shape up best when I can inhabit the characters and identify with what makes them tick and as of last week things were moving slowly.

The reason may be because unlike my first one, “Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed” where one of the subjects featured was the world of hip hop, which I was completely familiar with from my work as a songwriter/producer/record company partner. The subject matter in the book I am trying to write is streetball, the phenomenally popular world of basketball as it exists outside the NBA. I used to play on the streets of NYC, and I spent last summer watching someof the finest ballers in the world at Rucker’s Park in Harlem, but still it is not a world I’m fluent in.

What I am familiar with is the struggle to find a great character. One whose personality would be riveting no matter what world he inhabits. I know I need him to be fairly unscroupulous. “Fairly unscroupulous” because characters who are over the top
Psychopaths have little or no appeal to me. Whenever I read a cover blurb that says “there’s an evil maniac on the loose, who will stop at nothing to get his next victim, etc. I move onto the next literary possibility. This new book as in “Humpty” involves an exploration of motivations that I need resonate with my own experience with people which is people are capable of doing to do hurtful things without being purely despicable.

For inspiration I returned to reading material of my youth. The first book I grabbed off the shelf is Sanctuary by William Faulkner. I remember the main character as a true bad guy. His name is Popeye and he’s a kidnapper, killer, and sexually dysfunctional deviant, pretty good for starters. Faulkner reveals all of these aspects of this complicated man slowly and carefully in ways so empathetic I found myself trivializing his brutality by rationalizing that they are the result of unfortunate circumstances as opposed to a deeply dysfunctional personality. This is exactly the kind of juicy character that I wish to create!
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 08, 2007 Selena rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was my first Faulkner (I know I know!) and maybe not the best choice for a first impression. In book club I learned it was considered a "pot boiler" and was one of his best sellers, probably because of the sex and booze included. (But not sexy sex in case that intrigued you). I'm told that of Faulkner's work, this is a more plot driven novel, although our group agreed not the most pleasant of plots. That said, the writing gives the reader a strong sense of place, and many passages are absol...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 07, 2008 angrykitty rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics-smartypants

this book made me hate reading just a little bit. i had to read this in a college lit course, and the prof even explained in the beginning how this was a book that faulkner put out just to make some quick dough. man does it show. it's just a really lame book, and i forever lost respect for that particlar prof for assigning it....and he continued to live up to my lack of respect in every other class i took from him (bad grade on a first draft of a mark twain essay....changed the main topic over t...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 09, 2007 Celisa Steele rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those already familiar with Faulkner

I think The Sound and Fury and Absalom, Absalom are great books; Sanctuary is a good book. That's why I said I'd recommend Sanctuary to those already familiar with Faulkner. That said, on the other side of the coin, Sanctuary could be like Faulkner with training wheels, as I think the strong plot helps carry readers along despite his obfuscatory style. There aren't as many beatiful lyrical passages in Sanctuary as in The Sound and Fury and Absalom, Absalom either (assuming I'm remembering correc...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 14, 2013 Bill rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary

A Barely Coherent Mystery (2013)

Faulkner, William (1931). Sanctuary. New York: Vintage.

Often billed as Faulkner’s commercial whodunit, this novel hovers on the edge of unintelligibility throughout. But, it’s a “classic,” so what do I know.

The basic story: Temple Drake, a young, well-off college student in Prohibition-era Mississippi, is a wild party girl. Her drunken boyfriend takes them both to a bootlegger deep in the woods to get some drink. He becomes fall-down drunk, gets beaten up by the o...more A Barely Coherent Mystery (2013)

Faulkner, William (1931). Sanctuary. New York: Vintage.

Often billed as Faulkner’s commercial whodunit, this novel hovers on the edge of unintelligibility throughout. But, it’s a “classic,” so what do I know.

The basic story: Temple Drake, a young, well-off college student in Prohibition-era Mississippi, is a wild party girl. Her drunken boyfriend takes them both to a bootlegger deep in the woods to get some drink. He becomes fall-down drunk, gets beaten up by the other men there, and leaves, abandoning Temple. She gets raped, and in the commotion, a black man, Tommy, gets killed. Popeye, the bad guy, takes Temple to a whore house in Memphis, where he rents her out. Meanwhile, Tommy’s death is discovered and another black man, Lee, is accused and jailed. His lawyer, Horace, believes evidence-based reasoning will free him, but Lee is wrongly convicted when Temple lies on the stand. Lee is burned alive by an angry crowd. Horace skulks off, defeated. Temple remains oblivious.

That could, in principle, be the skeleton of an interesting mystery story, but there are two major problems with Faulkner’s telling of it that make it a failure. One is that characters are generally unmotivated. They are crazy, drunk, insane, or just generally weird, so they can do and say all sorts of surprising, unexpected things, because they are not normal people. It’s a writer’s crutch. Faulkner is known for his characterizations of the irrational, almost sub-human animals that inhabit his fictional Southern landscape, but that doesn’t make them interesting or believable. When there is little causal connection between events in a story, you don’t have a story, just a collection of scenes. Some people don’t mind that, but it simply does not work for a mystery story.

Secondly, Faulkner uses a writing style that deliberately obfuscates the story line, the characters’ motivations and other qualities, and indeed even their identities. Almost every scene starts off with a series of unresolved pronouns so you don’t know, can’t know, what the hell’s going on until you read a few more pages and deduce (if you are a close reader) which characters are even in the scene, let alone what they are doing there. Example, from the opening of chapter 7:

“From somewhere beyond the lamplit hall she could hear the voices – a word; now and then a laugh; the harsh, derisive laugh of a man easily brought to mirth by youth or by age, cutting across the spluttering of frying meat on the stove where the woman stood.”

That’s a typically charming Faulknerian sentence except the reader does not know who “she” is or who “a man” is, or who “the woman” is. We don’t know where the description is located in time or space, or why. All of that can be deduced by further reading, but when you see every scene open with such deliberate and unnecessary misdirection, it seems that Faulkner has contempt for his reader.

On top of that, all the scenes and chapters in the book have been put through a shredder then reassembled in random order, (Faulkner admits as much in his personal papers), so there is almost no chronological order to anything that happens. The result is a series of vignettes that, while often intriguingly written, do not add up to a coherent story, let alone an enjoyable one. If you insist on reading this book, you should first print out a list of characters (such as shown on Wikipedia), so you have a chance at understanding. Unless you enjoy crossword puzzles. (less)

like · see review

Jan 30, 2013 Cindy rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is supposed to be Faulkner's potboiler-his answer to the depression era pulps. But Faulkner can't really be trusted with any explanation of his own as the cold, hard truth. He was a fabricator, through and through. For me, this 'potboiler' gets a 3 1/2 stars because it's Faulkner and because it's layered and interesting. But, it's also cheap and brutal. I think he would agree. That's why we get an excuse from Faulkner saying he wrote this relative to the sort of stuff that was being so...more This book is supposed to be Faulkner's potboiler-his answer to the depression era pulps. But Faulkner can't really be trusted with any explanation of his own as the cold, hard truth. He was a fabricator, through and through. For me, this 'potboiler' gets a 3 1/2 stars because it's Faulkner and because it's layered and interesting. But, it's also cheap and brutal. I think he would agree. That's why we get an excuse from Faulkner saying he wrote this relative to the sort of stuff that was being sold and he was looking to make a buck. The story does contain some gems of intricate writing as well as stark visuals and things that take a while to sink in.

Temple Drake is a collage girl and she's a tease with boys. She sneaks from her bedroom in her father, the judge's house, and cohorts with older boys. Ultimately, one older boy she sneaks out with, away from college, likes to drink what's available, moonshine. This leads them out into the sticks where the young man, already drunk, crashes his car near the moonshiner's abode-and they keep the area staked out. The couple ends up at the mercy of a house full of degenerate people, mostly men. Temple is freaked out as the men are pretty creepy (with one very memorable character, grandpa-but he's blind and deaf and rattles from here to there in oblivion). Her boyfriend spends the evening, drinking, consorting with and getting beaten up by these roughnecks leaving Temple to fend for herself and even with the help of the house's only other women, Ruby, she doesn't fare well. And this is the story of Temple Drake and the mess she gets herself into.

This is a gritty tale and I haven't read much pulp from the 30s to compare it to. I would not recommend Sanctuary for the faint of heart, nor to anyone seeking to unlock the mysteries behind true genious or great literature. It's dark and offers little comfort in the way of the human condition-like Cormac McCarthy, who I also enjoy reading, but again, not for the faint of heart.

Faulkner was a great writer, capable of rare sensitivity and if you like him, you may like this, but being written in the 30s doesn't make this a more innocent tale-it's full of mean or down trodden people, hopeless people, and people who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag-if you like that sort of thing, don't say I didn't warn you and if Faulkner starts off a story telling you that a house is full of crimps, spungs and feebs, he is trying to warn you too. (less)

like · see review

Dec 11, 2012 Christopher Sutch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Frankly, this novel is a hot mess. The prose is uneven (and some of it is just plain clunky), due possibly to the circumstances of its composition and eventual publication (according to Polk, the novel was written after the publication of _Sartoris_ [_Flags in the Dust_], but was rejected for publication until after _The Sound and the Fury_ and _As I Lay Dying_ were published; my own personal feeling about this is that parts of the novel may date even further back in Faulkner's career, perhaps a...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 25, 2012 Carolyn Shank rated it 3 of 5 stars

SANCTUARY by William Faulkner was first accorded mixed reviews when it was published in 1931, and most critics still agree it is not one of Faulkner's finest novels. It was later made into the sensationalized movie of the same name starring the late Lee Remick as the antagonist Temple Drake. She is raped, and subsequently taken to a brothel by the evil Popeye Doyle, a half-breed freak, who, to put it delicately, is one of the lowest on the genetic totem pole of humanity: more animal than human....more

like · see review

Nov 29, 2011 Maduck831 rated it 5 of 5 stars

“There was a mirror behind her and another behind me, and she was watching herself in the one behind me, forgetting about the other one in which I could see her face, see her watching the back of my head with pure dissimulation. That’s why nature is ‘she’ and Progress is ‘he’: nature made the grape arbor, but Progress invented the mirror.” (14-15) “You’re not being tried by common sense,” Horace said. “You’re being tried by a jury.” (128) “I could even tell her I had a puncture,” Horace said. “t...more “There was a mirror behind her and another behind me, and she was watching herself in the one behind me, forgetting about the other one in which I could see her face, see her watching the back of my head with pure dissimulation. That’s why nature is ‘she’ and Progress is ‘he’: nature made the grape arbor, but Progress invented the mirror.” (14-15) “You’re not being tried by common sense,” Horace said. “You’re being tried by a jury.” (128) “I could even tell her I had a puncture,” Horace said. “time’s not such a bad thing after all. Use it right, and you can stretch anything out, like a rubberband, until it busts somewhere, and there you are, with all tragedy and despair in two little knots between thumb and finger of each land.” (177) “I don’t think about it. I don’t care. That’s what people in town think. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. What I do mind is, every day you force me to have to tell lies for you. Go away from here, Horace. Anybody but you would realize it’s a case of cold-blooded murder.” (179) “He knew that she knew it too, out of that feminine reserve of unflagging suspicion of all people’s action which seems at first to be mere affinity for evil but which is in reality practical wisdom.” (194) “Then it touched me, that nasty little cold hand, fiddling around inside the coast where I was naked. It was like alive ice and my skin started jumping away from it like those little flying fish in front of a boat. It was like my skin knew which way it was going to go before it started moving, and my skin would keep on jerking just ahead of it like there wouldn’t be anything there when the hand got there.” (211) “It’s us girls,” Miss Mrytle said. “Men just cant seem to take us and leave us for what we are. They make us what we are, then they expect us to be different. Except us not to never look at another man, while they come and go as they please.” (247) “But the lowest, cheapest thing on earth aint a nigger: it’s a jew. We need laws against them. Drastic laws. When a durn lowlife jew can come to a free country like this and just because he’s got a law degree, it’s time to put a stop to things. A jew is the lowest thing on this creation. And the lowest kind of jew is a jew layer. And the lowest kind of jew lawyer is a Memphis jew layer.” (258) “You’re a man now,” Horace said. “Aren’t you? I wish that jury could see you now, locked up in a concrete cell, scaring women and children with fifth grade ghost stories. They’d know you never had the guts to kill anybody.” (265) “You mean, with him at the foot of the bed, maybe? perhaps you holding him by the leg all the time, she he wouldn’t fall off?” / “Good God,” he whispered. “What kind of men have you known?” (268) “Horace couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear the man who had got burned screaming. He couldn’t hear the fire, though it still swirled upward unabated, as though it were living upon itself, and soundless: a voice of fury like in a dream, roaring silently out of a peaceful void.” (289) “While on his way to Pensacola to visit his mother, Popeye was arrested in Birmingham for the murder of a policeman in a small Alabama town on June 17 of that year. He was arrested in August. It was on the night of June 17 that Temple had passed him sitting in the parked car beside the road house on the night when Red had been killed.” (294) “While he was on his way home that summer they arrested him for killing a man in on twon and at an hour when he was in another town killing somebody else – that mad who made money and had nothing he could do with it, spend it for, since he knew that alcohol would kill him like poison, who had no friends and had never known a woman and knew he could never and he said, “For Christ’s sake,” looking about the cell in the jail of the town where the policeman had been killed, his free hand (the other was handcuffed to the other office who had brought him from Birmingham) finicking a cigarette from his coat.” (301-302) “Popeye began to jerk his neck forward in little jerks. “Psst!” he said, the sound cutting sharp into the drone of the minister’s voice; “psst!” The sheriff looked at him; he quit jerking his neck and stood rigid, as though he had an egg balanced on his head. “Fix my hair, Jack,” he said. / “Sure,” the sheriff said. “I’ll fix it for you”; springing the trap.” (308)(less)

like · see review

Jul 16, 2011 Veronica rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who likes dark literature or work focusing on the most base of the human race

Extremely strange. I had never read anything by Faulkner but decided I probably should, because having a Lit degree but only being able to quote contemporary supernatural P.I. noir novels is probably frowned upon by the more academically oriented literature fan. The description was brilliant yet extremely repetitive at times. In some paragraphs he will use the same word or phrase more than three times, and I'm not sure if it was to drive a simple point home or just because he preferred the phras...more

like · see review

Dec 05, 2009 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow, I never knew Faulkner could be like this. Considered his potboiler, this is extreme southern gothic. There is incredible imagery that amounts to lewd posturing that could easily have been done in comic book form, such as a fat sweaty man peeping through a keyhole while the villian, never without his hat, silently lights a cigarette and, standing over him, edges the flame closer and closer to the man's sweaty neck. Every description reaches to be as wretched as possible. Faulkner can still r...more Wow, I never knew Faulkner could be like this. Considered his potboiler, this is extreme southern gothic. There is incredible imagery that amounts to lewd posturing that could easily have been done in comic book form, such as a fat sweaty man peeping through a keyhole while the villian, never without his hat, silently lights a cigarette and, standing over him, edges the flame closer and closer to the man's sweaty neck. Every description reaches to be as wretched as possible. Faulkner can still remain elliptical; instead of saying that our bad guy killed another guy, he cuts ahead to the funeral where a bunch of ignorant attendees argue over what music to play ("Play 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love Baby,' he liked that." "How about 'Blue Danube'?" "Naw, we don't want any blues at this funeral!") I love Miss Reba, the proprietess of a Memphis bawdy house who gets distraught (and drunk with gin) over her long-dead lover and throws the dog named after him out the window. There are observations such as the maid complaining that the blood from a freshly broken hymen is the hardest to get out. And then there is Temple Drake, the 17 year old daughter of a judge who is on her way to becoming the town slut when she gets raped by an impotent man with a corncob. Her recounting of the incident is one of the most psychologically fascinating monologues I have ever read. She is drawn to perversity but attempts to hang on to some superficial sense of decorum. She fantasizes about finding a chastity belt that would remove her rapist's penis at just the right moment, while in action she tells the rapist that he better do her soon or he is not a real man. I cannot wait to see the Pre-Code movie version starring Miriam Hopkins.
And on a high literary note, this novel introduces us to more of the Snopes family, as we get to know state senator Clarence Snopes and barber college student Virgil Snopes. And the protagonist's sister is Narcissa Benbow, who was the love interest in Faulkner's previous "Flags in the Dust".(less)

1 like · like · see review

Sep 26, 2012 Matt Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, modern, southern-gothic, crime-novels

I picked up Sanctuary at a used bookstore for $3.00. "Faulkner for three bucks? It's in good condition, why not?" When I got home and read about the book, I frowned and set it aside, forgotten for a month and a half or so.

Faulkner, in an early introduction to the book, called it a potboiler - a book he wrote for purely commercial reasons. He said that he wrote it quickly, to meet current trends. Critical response was negative. Hemingway called it "blown-up and no good". Goodreads response has fo...more I picked up Sanctuary at a used bookstore for $3.00. "Faulkner for three bucks? It's in good condition, why not?" When I got home and read about the book, I frowned and set it aside, forgotten for a month and a half or so.

Faulkner, in an early introduction to the book, called it a potboiler - a book he wrote for purely commercial reasons. He said that he wrote it quickly, to meet current trends. Critical response was negative. Hemingway called it "blown-up and no good". Goodreads response has followed mostly the same approach.

I argue that these people are dead wrong. Sanctuary is a Very Good Novel. It's not a Great Novel, but that doesn't mean it isn't good, and that it doesn't have meaning. Critical opinion is starting to change on the work, and I've seen quite a few articles questioning Faulkner's claims on the book. We know, for example, that it took him several months to write it, and that he made several corrections to it later.

I hate summaries in reviews, so this one will be brief. Sanctuary tells the story of a washed up Mississippi lawyer trying to find some meaning in life, and a young, spoiled rich girl giving in fully to sin and depravity after subjection to a period of brutal violence. Temple Drake's ascent to evil is just as complete as Horace Benbow's collapse in failure.

If you decide to pick up this book, don't do what a few reviewers have done - don't give up in the first 50 pages or so. They're confusing. Characters are called by different names, they're introduced without explanation, actions aren't clear, and you're left scratching your head. "Did that just happen?" "I think someone got murdered, but I'm not sure..."

This is intentional. I've mentioned somewhere else that form should match content, and Faulkner does a brilliant job of that in this novel. The reader is just as confused after leaving Goodwin's place as anyone who was actually there would be. What actually happened is revealed through the rest of the book through dialogue with the characters. Sometimes it leaves us wondering, but it always sheds light on past events.

Faulkner managed to shock me. I was really unprepared for the brutality in this novel. Even though I didn't see any of it happen (or even read it in a contemporaneous sense), the reveals always left me with a feeling that something horrible has happened, but more importantly, they always made sense. This assault on my sense of justice wasn't just thrown in for no reason, it fit the story organically.

Sanctuary is a perfect picture of the grotesque, and it helps analyze the human condition in a way that less brutal works just couldn't. For that reason, I say it's not just good, but important. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 08, 2013 Marts Kasabov rated it 4 of 5 stars

Днес посегнах на Фокнър. Посегнах към това, което беше най-близо до креслото, а това за съжаление се оказа криминален роман. Единственият му криминален роман. Този тип литература ме изнервя, ядосва и отегчава със своето старание да замаскира, винаги изненадващия финал. Щом кралят-Конан Дойл със своя Холмс не можаха да ме задържат повече от 2 разказа, то какво да говорим за автор, на който жанрът му е чужд.
За моя изненада, това се оказа съвсем порядъчна книга с доста банална история, разбира се...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 14, 2012 K.M. Weiland rated it 3 of 5 stars

In reading this book, I find myself crystallizing so many of the impressions of Faulkner that I've been kicking around the past year in which I've been consistently reading him. Bottom line is: I don't like him. I've tried. But I don't like him. He offers these flashes of excellence, only to bog the whole thing down in artistic blather that muddies his own water. In Sanctuary, he wrote "the most horrible story he could think of" in an attempt to sell books out of sheer controversy. It *is* a hor...more

like · see review

May 28, 2009 Brandi rated it 3 of 5 stars

this was the first faulkner book that i didn't come away from feeling like i'd just witnessed some of the grossest human behavior ever, which is weird knowing that this book does, in fact, contain some of the grossest human behavior. the "hard-boiled detective" element of the story sort of glossed it over for me, making the book feel like a film more so than a nasty faulkner riddle.

my initial reaction has since changed.

there are many, many ways to look at the characters, their relationships, and...more

like · see review

Oct 23, 2011 Belen added it · review of another edition

Otra vez Faulkner. Todo un reto, me lo tiene que leer Fernando. Ver veremos, dijo un ciego, nunca mejor dicho.

Travesura realizada.

Me cuesta mucho no poner spoilers, si alguien, incompresniblemente lee esto, por por favor, que tenga cuidado.

Me ha encantado. Recién lo acabé estaba dispuesta a jurar que era el mejor libro que había leído en mi vida. Ahora ya lo voy situando en mi escala pero me sigue gustando mucho.

Sigo dándole vueltas a una cuestión. ¿Qué quiso contarnos aquí? Es decir, la histori...more

like · see review

Mar 07, 2009 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

i have mixed feelings about this novel.

first and foremost, faulkner is an amazing stylist. it feels like i slip off into an alternate universe each time i read him. faulkner doesn't tell stories; he creates climates. there's something earthy and visceral about his language, and it was interesting to see it applied to pulpier material than i'm used to (i've only read the sound and the fury and as i lay dying otherwise). a fairly thick plot is lurking beneath all of sanctuary's style, even if it's...more

1 like · like · see review

May 22, 2012 Andrew added it

This books starts off so strong (namely, everything that goes on at the Old Frenchman homestead; as much as the first third or even close to half of the text), then just turns into “Noir Cliches: The Novel.” Because it’s faulkner, the cliches are mingled with that trademark grotesque, which is so powerful elsewhere – but here, most of the time, it just comes off as bizarre and tiresome. After a while, there’s just too much mediocrity here to take the work seriously as a whole. There’s also some...more

like · see review

Nov 05, 2012 Victor Dumais rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Misanthropes and anybody who feels a little too happy

I wish I had more thumbs. This book is an empty stomach-nothing but misery. Best not enjoyed.

I have many qualms with Faulkner.
1. Nobody ever makes a good decision. Everything everybody does is either selfish, motivated by unkind intentions, or caused by a misinterpretation of the true state of things.
2. No, I do not appreciate your run-ons. I don't care if they're art.
3. If you think about it, none of the characters do anything outright. Shit like "...he said, neither speaking aloud nor to h...more

like · see review

Jan 24, 2010 Kellyreaderofbooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's almost hard to describe what this book is about, without giving away spoilers. Sanctuary starts off with a well-to-do man from the city stumbling across a ramshackle farmhouse where moonshine is being made. From there, the story spirals off to include Temple (a rich and popular teenage girl), Mrs. Goodwin (the moonshiner's common law wife), and Popeye (a deranged misfit). Their paths continue to cross as the book goes on; sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.

Faulkner is fast becoming one o...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 03, 2013 Beale Stainton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Faulkner is a brilliant writer, perhaps one of the best. The story line is not for the faint hearted. There are a number of major questions looming, but personally, I'm not even going to bother with them. I often found myself completely taken by the poetry of Faulkners sentences and paragraphs, that had the author been any less of a writer then the book would be one of the worst ever written. Yes, it is a very fine and balanced art. I only stopped reading it 10 minutes ago so it is all too fresh...more

like · see review

Dec 18, 2012 Mia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm giving this 3 stars because ... well, because it's Faulkner, right? But if I'm truthful I'm not sure I would give this 1 star if his name wasn't on the cover. I'm not even sure it would get published if his name wasn't on the cover!Perhaps I'm intimidated by this master wordsmith or maybe I believe I'm not smart enough to 'get' this author? Ummm ... no, that's not it. I've read most of Faulkner's work and this one is just ... sub par.
The sad part is that I believe this could have been a fab...more

like · see review

Jan 01, 2010 Nelson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well I found Sanctuary to be a great novel, even though the author claims in the introduction that the work is a 'potboiler' (a piece written solely for financial gain). This southern gothic tale moves between backwoods Mississippi farms and a decadent Memphis underworld during the prohibition period. An idealist lawyer trying to correct injustice, a shady underworld sociopath, a beautiful well bred college girl caught with a bad crowd, a corrupt state senator and hillbilly moonshiners are just...more

like · see review

Nov 28, 2011 Longfellow rated it 3 of 5 stars

Temple Drake, college girl from a well-to-do family, gets herself in trouble by going on a date with an older townie. The townie’s alcoholic tendencies lead them to a house hidden away in the woods where an illegal whiskey operation (Sanctuary is set during Prohibition) is headquartered. The house is inhabited by a few men and one woman, an ex-prostitute who is now “married” to one of the men. Things go wrong and only get worse for Temple, as she is first raped and then put up in a brothel in a...more Temple Drake, college girl from a well-to-do family, gets herself in trouble by going on a date with an older townie. The townie’s alcoholic tendencies lead them to a house hidden away in the woods where an illegal whiskey operation (Sanctuary is set during Prohibition) is headquartered. The house is inhabited by a few men and one woman, an ex-prostitute who is now “married” to one of the men. Things go wrong and only get worse for Temple, as she is first raped and then put up in a brothel in a seedy part of Memphis, though not with the expectation of participating in the business.

If I were to attempt a full description of the plot and context for the main players here, my word count would quickly balloon out of control. Instead, I’ll ask just a couple questions for which I have no satisfactory answer: What is the significance of the title? And second, What is the significance of the name Temple Drake?

Is sanctuary the whiskey-house hidden away in the woods? A tree has even been intentionally felled across the road to discouraged passersby from getting near, and until Temple’s arrival, the men involved in the operation enjoyed a relatively trouble-free and financially stable life.

Is the brothel Temple’s sanctuary, where she hides herself away in her room, constantly smoking cigarettes and demanding another drink of gin, trying to cope with the loss of life as she has known it?

Horace Benbow, a lawyer who becomes involved in a murder case—a shooting that occurred at the house in the woods—in some ways is also seeking sanctuary; he has left his wife and returned to his home town for a spell. His reason for leaving: he couldn’t bear to continue to carry a box of shrimp home once each week, something he’s been doing for his wife for ten years. The smell and leaking fluids disgust him. In a few spots like this one, Faulkner does manage to sneak in some dark humor, though everything is so heavy it’s not hard to miss them.

None of these answers satisfy me. Perhaps each character’s sanctuary is different; for some, it seems, death may be sanctuary.

Temple Drake’s name surely carries some symbolic significance. Yet I read a third of the book before I stopped and said, Wait a minute. Temple? Here is a girl from a well-to-do family, her father is judge, and she attends dances every week wearing a plethora of different dresses and has many a beaux. She is taken out of the bubble of her social and economic life, first to an illegal operation in the woods and then to be sheltered in a whore house. What all this means, I don’t know, but I did happen to read a sentence from another book today that is an intriguing juxtaposition: “Within Israel, the temple bore manifold social, spiritual, political, economic, and cultural importance” (from Rodney Clapp’s A Peculiar People). Perhaps Faulkner wishes to explore the consequences of a clash between the social, economic, and cultural worlds of the South. Obviously, this is what all of his work does; I’m just stretching rather impotently for sensible answer.
And speaking of impotence, the character Popeye’s name carries with it a certain irony . . .

In some ways, Sanctuary is more accessible than many of Faulkner’s other novels. While it is not difficult to read, it is difficult to follow at times; in typical Faulkner fashion, plot details are delivered at times without complete context or transition, and even character names are avoided in spots in favor of ambiguous pronouns. Using this technique, Faulkner creates a bit of a puzzle regarding some aspects of the narrative. Sometimes I reread these sections, thinking I had missed something, but more often I just read on and Faulkner usually clears up the ambiguities a bit later with a more explicit announcement integrated into the narrative.

Light in August and The Sound and the Fury remain my favorites.

(less)

like · see review

Jul 14, 2010 Nate D rated it 3 of 5 stars

A vicious little story of civic (in)justice and sociopathic psychology. This was written and rejected just before As I Lay Dying and by Faulkner's own admission, it was conceived purely as a lurid moneymaker, as horrifying to the public as possible. Perhaps it was upon revision before its eventual 1931 publication that this grew from potboiler into its incisive, bitter social commentary and obfuscating fractured narrative path. Honestly, much as I'm struck by the Selby-like blackness of the form...more

like · see review

Sep 21, 2010 Kelsey Lancraft rated it 4 of 5 stars

I will be the first to admit that any book of Faulkner's is not an easy read. But I will be the first to protest that the complexity and complication characteristic of his books make them a worthwhile read. This is definitely true of this book. It tells the story of Miss Temple Drake, a privileged girl who faces actual trouble for the first time when she is stranded on a farm homestead. Here she falls victim to the villainous men that live there, changing her forever into a different girl. This...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 16, 2010 Maciek rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010, southern-gothic

Honeslty failed to capture my interest. Liked the descriptions and writing, but the whole thins doesn't appeal to me. I've read that Faulkner wrote it for money. Well, what Dickens managed, Faulkner failed...Dicken's most famous potboiler was entertaining and this is a mess.

1 like · like · see review

Aug 04, 2011 Mazel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: roman

lecture accompagnée avec Grain de sel,
merci Natalia.

C'est Sanctuaire qui valut à Faulkner sa réputation d'auteur ténébreux et scandaleux. L'écrivain n'a-t-il pas tenu à inventer, selon son expression, "l'histoire la plus effroyable qu'on puisse imaginer" ? En réalité, il s'est inspiré d'un fait divers, survenu dans un night-club de la Nouvelle-Orléans : le viol d'une jeune fille avec un "objet bizarre", devenu un épi de maïs dans le roman, suivi d'une étrange séquestration. Dans un climat de vio...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Classics Corner	17	16	Nov 11, 2007 07:09am
persian translation	1	1	May 16, 2007 10:51am

combine
Other Editions (58)

More editions...

Genres

Classics

100 users

Literature

34 users

Literature > American

26 users

Novels

19 users

American > Southern

16 users

Gothic > Southern Gothic

11 users

Mystery > Crime

11 users

Literary Fiction

10 users

Gothic

9 users

Literature > 20th Century

6 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. One of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, his reputation is based mostly on his novels, novellas, and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwriter.
The majority of his works are based in his native state of Mississippi. Though his work was published as earl...more

More about William Faulkner...

Books by William Faulkner

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Det allra heligaste

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Sanctuary

“I be dog if hit don't look like sometimes that when a fellow sets out to play a joke, hit ain't another fellow he's playing that joke on; hit's a kind of big power laying still somewhere in the dark that he sets out to prank with without knowing hit, and hit all depends on whether that ere power is in the notion to take a joke or not, whether or not hit blows up right in his face, like this one did in mine. ("A Bear Hunt")” — 2 people liked it

“Usava uma camisola larga demais, de crepe cor-de-cereja, que surgia negra contra o lençol. Os cabelos soltos, agora penteados, pareciam negros. O rosto, pescoço e braços, sobre as cobertas, eram cinzentos. Depois que os outros saíram ela ficou durante algum tempo com a cabeça escondida sob o lençol. Assim continuou até ouvir fechar-se a porta, até se apagar o som dos passos que desciam a escada, da voz do médico que se exprimia com volubilidade, da respiração ofegante de Miss Reba. Sons que adquiriram, no sombrio saguão, a cor do luar, e desapareceram. Depois Temple pulou da cama e foi até a porta, fazendo correr o trinco. Voltou ao leito e cobriu-se, inclusive a cabeça, ali ficando encolhida até faltar-lhe o ar.
Derradeiros reflexos cor-de-açafrão tingiam o teto e a parte das paredes onde viam-se as sombras de paliçada da avenida, que a oeste se erguia contra o céu. Ela viu-os desaparecer, consumidos pelos sucessivos bocejos da cortina. Viu também a última luz condensar-se na parte fronteira do relógio e o mostrador passar, no escuro, de orifício redondo a disco suspenso no nada, no primitivo caos, e mudar depois para bola de cristal que continha, na sua tranquila e misteriosa profundidade, o caos ordenado do mundo complicado e sombrio sobre cujos flancos, marcados de cicatrizes, as velhas feridas rolam vertiginosamente para a frente, mergulhando na escuridão onde se escondem novos desastres.” — 1 person liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Sanctuary
avg rating	preview: Sanctuary Goodreads rating: 3.67 (5031 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18789.Sanctuary?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333578874l/18789.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18789.Sanctuary?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Sanctuary by William Faulkner[/url]

Sanctuary

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website