The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury is one of the few novels that I have read many times. I find something new in it with each reading. It is also one of the most difficult novels I have read. The story is centered on the Compson family in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Point of view shifts from section to section. The first part is written in a stream of consciousness style and this technique also reappears later in the novel. The voice that we hear in the first chapter will puzzle the first-time reader. Don’t let this stop you from reading on. An entire, palpable, richly detailed and heart-breaking world will open up for you by the book’s end. Faulkner is an enigma: His setting is archaic, but his style is so modern that most readers still find it challenging. He is considered to be one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, yet he is also a “regionalist” in the best sense of the word. The entire novel is a dazzling tour de force.