Lie Down in Darkness
by William Styron
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Book Summary Information
Author: William StyronEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-03-03
ISBN: 0679735976
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Lie Down in Darkness
Book Review: A Hauntingly Beautiful, Yet Painful Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Before I read the novel Lie Down in Darkess, I read commentary which said that Merle Miller, a noted critic of the time, could not finish the last eighty pages because of beautiful and doomed tragedy of it all. The day I finished Styron's Lie Down in Darkess, it occurred to me that I should stop writing because none of my prose would ever be this amazingly poetic.
Lie Down in Darkess is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Milton Loftis, the main character, is not a protagonist because he is not our hero, although we certainly spend time hoping that he might find a middle ground between his shrewish wife, his alcoholic excesses and the heartbreak of his feelings for his oldest daughter Peyton. Milton Loftis is a man trapped in a Greek tragedy who blunders on every day, balancing his illusions and hoping for the best, although he, and we, the readers, see the foreboding clouds which spell certain doom from the beginning of the book.
Helen, the bitter, hypocritical wife, clothes herself in the self righteous delusions of religiosity and spends most of her energy with the mentally incapacitated daughter Maudie. She pretends that Milton is a profligate sinner and adulterer who has made it his life's work to torture her, ignoring that her icy civility and the obvious hatred of her own daughter has been the prod to his loveless and licentious life style. Milton Loftis finds some modicum of hope in his sad affair with Dolly Bonner, but that and whisky are only ways to escape an insufferable existence he cannot escape and cannot understand. He is not weak enough to die, and he is not strong enough to flee.
Admittedly, I am a stylist of the Faulknerian, Reynolds Price persuasion, so I found the haunting beauty of this novel enough to recommend it to other readers. I understand that is my bias, but I stand by that verdict. The more people who read this great book, the more awareness of life's inexorable twists, and, hopefully, the more aware we become of the pain of others, and the more committed we become to tolerance and forgiveness.
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