First published 2014
The Compson family watches their world collapse in Jefferson, Mississippi. Benjy Compson, who cannot speak or understand time, mourns his sister Caddy's absence. His brother Quentin obsesses over family honor and Caddy's lost virginity as he walks through Harvard on his final day. Jason, bitter and cruel, embezzles money meant for Caddy's daughter while tormenting his family. Their father drinks himself toward death, their mother wallows in self-pity, and the black servants hold the household together. Each brother remembers Caddy differently. Benjy recalls her smell of trees. Quentin cannot forget her wedding day. Jason sees only the financial burden she represents. The family's decline mirrors the changing South, where old certainties crumble and new realities take hold. At its center lies the absence of Caddy, the sister and daughter whose choices shattered the family's illusions about itself.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-dysfunction, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Jefferson, Mississippi
Period: 20th-century
544 pages · Kindle Edition · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: mental-illness