Brian's review
A Death In The Family
by James Agee
Brian's review
A Death In The Family by James Agee
Brian's review
rating:
recommended 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 the book that causes one to commiserate with what were certainly autobiographical elements from Agee in it. There is a rare (in literature anyway) nakedness of the deepest emotions described [as much as possible] with words - just the passages about the little boy's (Rufus) struggles with being teased by bigger children will break your heart. It is a challenging read.
