A review by mitchellhb
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

5.0

I was unprepared for how funny this book could be. It was my first Faulkner, and I was expecting a fair amount of doom and gloom. It is, in fact, fairly grim—I mean, it's about a family's efforts to move their matriarch's body to her hometown to be buried, so there's no way for it to be exactly light-hearted—but the gallows humor piles up so fast that it's actually a pleasure to read in the darkest kind of way. There's something inherently, wrongfully hilarious and beautiful about a son pounding and sawing away at his dying mother's coffin right outside her bedroom window to let her know it's being made just right for her, just the way she demanded. Reading a book like this while traveling for my own grandparents' funeral turned out to be a strangely comforting and perfect choice.