A Death in the Family by James Agee Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of A Death in the Family
Book Review: Forced and dreary fiction
Summary: 2 Stars
I went into this book thinking that I would be captured by its originality and sentimentality, but found neither. The story was trite and exploitative. In addition, it almost entirely left out the decedent's blood relatives, which is curious given the circumstance's of Jay's death.Finally, the insertion of the uncompleted portion's of Mr. Agee's writings was forced. It was written in a different voice as although not meant to be part of the same work. An unfortunate editorial decision to include it.
Book Review: Heartbreaking...
Summary: 4 Stars
A thoroughly moving portrayal of death. The characters are beautifully simple people and because their lives are so ordinary, it is easier for a reader to empathize with their loss. I'm not sure that "Death" is what you would call a "great novel" - very little happens - but at the very least it's some "great writing" and almost always manages to strike an authentic chord.Book Review: I Won't Act and Pretend That This is A Good Book
Summary: 2 Stars
James Agee's A Death in The Family is a challenging prospect for a 300-page text. It is a book that has received the most valuable award that one can bestowed upon an American writer: The Pulitzer Prize. While the depths of Agee's written skills are not in question, the flow and the nature of the text left much to be desired. While I was enraptured at time with the depth of the visual imagery and sheer emotion carried throughout the text, I thought that the general flow of the novel was a bit too fractured and laconic. Also, at least for me, the emotions of the children were not clear enough. As well, while the prose was marvelous, it was a pure chore to finish reading this book. The only part that I found engaging was the actual death in the family. They took a strong moment and made a comment about race? This narrative move did not make sense to me, and it helped to ruin the pace that it so slowly had gained from the pages upon pages of ink that were spilled about the breakfast and Jay making and not making the pancake along with generally bickering (in a playful way, of course) with his wife. While some may consider this a classic, I consider it an exercise in style over substance.Book Review: I'm confused, but...I FEEL good....
Summary: 5 Stars
James Agee's writing just does something to me. As I read his books, I go back and forth between loving and loathing what I'm reading--I finish his books with a vague feeling of disappointment--and then for YEARS afterward I can't stop thinking about them.
It happened to me first with "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," and it's happening again with "A Death in the Family."
"A Death in the Family" tells the story of a small Catholic family affected by the sudden death of their father/husband/brother-in-law/son-in-law/et cetera. The first half of the book examine several different characters as they gather around the soon-to-be-dead-man's old and suffering father. For all that time it seems as if the death alluded to by the book's title will be the death of the man's father. Instead, the man himself dies in a car accident on the way back home from his sick father's. The book flashes back to the childhood of the dead man's son, and hovers around many of the book's characters, seeming almost indecisive as to who it's going to be about, seeming nebulous and atemporal. The wife. The kids. A preacher. A neighbor. A sibling. At times the story feels scattered and unfocused, but the writing is always so beautiful that it the story almost doesn't seem to matter, and the vagueness seems to match the confusion that comes after the sudden death of a close loved one.
The book deals well with the themes of death and loss and family relations and grieving and God and religion, and James Agee writes masterfully about the way children think. His descriptions of things and emotions are dead on, and his occasional experimental passages (like the man starting his car, and the sounds it makes for ten minutes) are a delight.
If the author had not died early of a sudden heart attack, and had lived to finish the book's editing himself, I bet it would have been even better. I recommend this and any James Agee book to every literate person out there.
It's something else, and it's something good.
Book Review: Importance of Family!
Summary: 5 Stars
As a high school teacher, I used Agee's book to demonstrate an author's ability to use diction and syntax to capture the emotions of students. My students absolutely loved the ending since it appears unresolved. It led to interesting dicussions over the differences between spirituality and religion. Students also enjoyed focusing on the italicized versions, not placed in their particular locations within the book by Agee but rather by the editors, and where they believed they best fit. Although a modern classic to many, it is an easy read for most students in a high school setting.