i read this book when i was much younger, but recently came across it again. the story is amusing and the characters are endearing. it's a wonderful read for kids, and big kids too!

This story is about a girl named Emily and her teacher Mrs.Rooney. Her class is playing in the snow. There are two characters named Emily and Sherri that don't like each other.The day Mrs.Rooney wasn't there is because she took a couple days off.Then Mrs.Rooney found a subsitute, her name was Mrs.Vincent ,and Emily really wants to meet her , and she wants to dress nice for that day so that she will like her and Sherri copied Emily with the idea she had.Then Emily got mad,then Emily was in charge because Mrs.Vincent put her in charge while shes going to get something.So Emily caught Sherri playing around with Richard and Emily put Sherrie's name on the board , and Sherri just ignored and didn't listen and just kept talking then when Mrs.Vincent returned and she looked at whose name was on the board . Mrs.Vincent said ''Thank you Emily for keeping an eye on the class''.The next day after school Emily, Sherri and Mrs.Vincent were making a card for Mrs.Rooney, but they ran out of paper so Mrs.Vincent went to get some more paper ,as she left Emily and Sherri , Then they started to talk to each other ,and they decided to be friends again.When Mrs.Vincent came back with paper she was happy Emily and Sherri became friends again . The next day Mrs.Rooney returned and she got Emily's valentina card and she was pleased to get a card from Emily. When it was Valentines day it was time to get all the cards, and pass them out to everyone and Emily made a card a special card for Sherri Dent .I enjoyed reading this book because it talks about Valentines Day

SANCTUARY is, by all standards, an odd book. A minor work by a major talent, it blends elements of Greek tragedy and tawdry potboiler to create an unusual amalgam. Faulkner himself was quite up front about it being his great attempt to write a bestseller, lathing the book with a bevy of cheap effects, yet still to imbuing page after page with one striking phrase after another.

Although not major Faulkner, it is still Faulkner, and is definitely worth reading. It is set in Yoknapatawpha county, and features many characters who either appear in other books or whose relatives appear in other books. Furthermore, the key female character in the book, Temple Drake, reappears as the major character in REQUIEM FOR A NUN, written twenty years after this one. While I do not rate this anywhere nearly as highly as many of his other books, being something of an oddity, it is nonetheless absolutely not a waste of time. While there are many sensationalist elements, there are still many magnificent sentences that read more like poetry than prose, and many of the characters are memorable.

If one is wanting to read only one or two books by Faulkner, I would not recommend this one. I would recommend instead AS I LAY DYING or, if one is feeling more ambitious, ABSALOM, ABSALOM. But if one is planning on reading all of the major works of Faulkner, then this is a book one should not skip. Minor Faulkner is better than the major works of many other writers.

Imagine it's 1929 and you're reading a book about bootlegging, couples living in sin, rape, whorehouses, with near-explicit sex scenes. Faulkner's SANCTUARY must have been mind-blowing to the genteel masses. They were reading material that they still don't show on network television today, in an age where such things are so commonly discussed in the media that we hardly look sideways at it. This book must have arrived like an explosion, shaking the sensibilities of readers everywhere, daring booksellers to put it on their shelves.

SANCTUARY is not an easy book. You'll find yourself, if you're like me, rereading passages to understand exactly what's going on. The characters, though precisely described, can be difficult to picture in your mind, especially as we move further away from the Jazz Age, with its unusual expressions, costume, and mores. Imagine Tennessee and Mississippi when cars were relatively new to the roads, when the various social strata -- some wearing suits, some overalls -- began mixing together more easily. Imagine being a teenage girl acting as a woman trapped in a moonshiner's shack, far away from the protection of her home, encountering men like creatures in a horrific play who drink liquor and watch her lie under the covers, her only protector passed out beside her.

Faulkner's reintroduced introduction is a godsend that will help you decipher the book somewhat. The editor's notes at the end of the book will help you understand much of the jargon and the motivation of the characters.

A good read in any age.

William Faulkner stands in my mind with only a few authors whose writing does not seem like writing. His novels seem more moments of real life. While I was reading "Sanctuary" you forget you are reading a book and the characters take on a virtual reality in your mind. Like all of Faulkner's books, this one is disorienting at first, simply by the author's strength of vision. The main plot revolves around Temple Drake, a coquettish college girl who likes to secretly sneak out of her college dorm to attend dances. One of her rides back from one of these dances is a boy named Gowan Stevens. He decides to stop off at an illegal moonshine operation and promptly sets about getting drunk. Temple is trapped at the house surrounded by all sorts of shady characters you would associate with such an operation. One of these is named Popeye, and trust me he is not a hero, he rapes Temple. One of the things I found slightly disturbing was the sense that Temple is a flirt and you get the sense that Faulkner felt that eventually some sex crime was going to be committed against her. She could get away with things around college boys but she fails to realize that with criminals, its a very bad move. It's the beginning of her great moral slide that was always just waiting to happen. There are other subplots going on around it. The owner of the moonshine operation is a convict and his wife supported herself through prostitution while he was in the joint, which is a source of tension between them. Horace Benbow is a lawyer who has left his wife simply because he recognizes the hollowness of his marriage. These characters are connected by the crime against Temple. The depressing thing about this novel is that noone really gets a sanctuary. The ending is not pretty. That's what makes it so powerful and so real. This book is right up there with Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in sheer power of vision.

I could say that this is one of the best books that I've ever read, but that would be giving myself far too much credit intellectually. Through a 20th century literature course at my university, I was given enough helpful hints to guide me through this book's odd time shifts, and its blurring stream of consciousness. Once these two things were pointed out to me and explained, I was able to delve into it, and concentrate much more on the meaning BEHIND the text, rather than struggling with what the LITERAL meaning of the text was.

My favorite section is Dilsey's, the Compson's aged black female servant. In the screwed up household, she is the only one who is normal. She is the only one there left who cares for Benjy, after his sister, Caddy, leaves, for one thing. She is also the only one who tries to take care of Quentin, Caddy's daughter whom she named such after her dead brother. Dilsey has such a grasp on life. "I've seen the first, and I've seen the last," is one quote that sticks with me. I wonder if she is merely talking about the rise and fall of the Compson family, or if it means more than that....

I am very disappointed with the people who bashed the novel. When I was frustrated with this novel, I did not blame it on Faulkner, but on my lack of ability to understand him. With help from my English instructor, however, I discovered one of the greatest American novels ever written.

Okay. I have had a bitter love/hate relationship with Faulkner since the first work I read of his, "The Bear." Well, after reading this novel, struggling, cussing, and questioning, I think it is safe to say that Faulkner is the greatest American author of the 20th century. (Deep breath) So what do we have in "The Sound and the Fury"? Too much to type, and I don't know most of it anyway. What I do know is that reading this book turns the experience into an obsession. It is tremendously difficult to read and it takes over your life. I believe that the reason Faulkner wrote it this way is because he is arguing that language can unite people. No, you can't use language to make good mothers, fathers, brothers, or sisters - just take a look at the Compson family. But maybe language can serve as a unifying factor between this and other books in Modernism? Whatever. Here, this might be at least slightly helpful. Caddy: Central character of the book. She is the object of fixation by her brothers, yet there isn't anything exceptional about her - the obsession is arbitrary. Faulkner doesn't give her a voice, but she speaks through her actions (Example: Squatting on the branch with muddy underwear looking through the window at her grandmother's funeral -- a feat her brother's looked upon with awe). Benjy: His narration is the first one of the book and it contains the truth of the Compson family situation objectively because he is retarded. The only thing he notices is that things happen, no emotions or thoughts attached. No desire. He does have an amazing ability in being able to predict Caddy's sexual decline (Young Caddy smells like trees, purity) - (Teenage Caddy smells like rain, she is wearing perfume). Benjy loss is Caddy as he wonders up and down the old pasture, now a golf course as he hears the golfers yelling "Caddie!" Quentin: He cannot see himself. He wants to restore Caddy into a body that is real, but his obsession with her is so he won't have to look at himself (Man this is hard to explain without giving away plot). Jason: The embodiment of evil. The weird thing is that his obsession with material things is what makes him the sanest character in the book! For isn't this obsession a nationwide phenomenon? Mr. Compson: A failure of a father on all levels, despite his effort. His once aristocratic family is now borderline poor. Mrs. Compson: The mother who is so helpless that she cannot take care of herself, let alone her family. Dilsey: The housekeeper who is the sole source of responsibility in the family. ----------------------------------------------------------------- For me this book absorbed me but, in many ways, it was a nightmare. I have never experienced characters as vivid as the Compson family. I would argue that Caddy might be the most developed portrait of a female ever written. This book also has great rereading value. I estimate that after my detailed reading, I picked up on about twenty-percent of all the symbolism and implications. No, this is not a beach book. It is a book you read at your upstairs desk with your pencil in hand to make notes in the margin and a cup of coffee at your side. I urge you to become obsessed. You'll fit right in with the Compson's.

This was the first Faulkner novle I read. The first time I read it, I wanted to chuck the book through my bedroom window. But after taking my time, reading about Faulkner, and mapping out the Benjy section with the help of Cliff's Notes, I began to enjoy this book very much. It's basically centered around one event: the daughter's lost of her virginity and the subsequent effects on her family afterwards. The book is broken into four section, each named after one of her three brothers (Benjy, Quentin, and Jason) and the family housekeeper (Disley). Each narrator gives their views of the situation, (Disley's section is narrated by Faulkner himself.)Each chapter is written in quite a different style; the most difficult, most would agree, being the first chapter, the Benjy section. Benjy is mentally retarded and has no sense of time; he works purely on physical sensation. The timeframe during his narrative is all over the place. To clear things up, Cliff's Notes map out most of the time changes in his section. (No one but Faulkner himself knows all of them, and he's dead.) Once you come to know where the scene changes, the story starts to unfold. The second section, Quentin's, is written in stream-of-consciousness. Quentin's section is written with sohpisticated vocabulary and sentence structure because he is a student at Harvard. Jason's section is probably the quickest read; he's incredibly ignorant and cruel. The Disley section is probably the most satisfying overall, but each section needs the help of the others to reach the story's full effect. This is well worth the read if you have the time.

I enjoyed most of this book, but found it inconsistent. Some parts extremely interesting - especially the portion on President Polk. For instance the White House was considered completely public, so he had difficulty working. Also, there was much insight into a little know president. Other parts were tedious, such as the older ancestors. All in all I thought it was an interesting way to portry history. The author used an extremely interesting and accomplished family to walk us through the decades and centuries.

I was given this book as a birthday present six months ago. I did not read it at that time because I did not think I would be that interested in it. Boy was I wrong. Once I started reading I could not put the book down. The book truely brings to life the history of America in a very engaging and entertaining way. I recommend this book to anybody who is interested in history or those who just enjoy a good book.

Being new to Charlotte, NC, I've started reading up on the history of Western North Carolina -- I borrowed this book from the library as the Polk family has been very prominent in this area. It was much more than I had expected: the whole panorama of the history of the United States to recent history told in terms of the people involved, and the Polk family has been very involved since early colonial days. The only era not touched on was the Spanish-American War! Well worth an addition to my personal library

As a graduate student Of Montessori education at Xavier University, I have had to read MANY books by and about Maria Montessori. Lillard's book is the worst of them. It oversimplifies the Montessori Method and is incorrect in its information. Her books are so inaccurate, we are not to use them as a reference in any paper we write. Many people like to use her books to get an understanding of the Montessori Method because they are so easy to read. However, if you want accurate information, read a book by Maria Montessori. True, her books are difficult to read, but it is worth it for anyone who wants to REALLY learn about her method.

Three years ago - I was scrambling for alternatives to public schools and I NEEDED to know what a Montessori shool was all about. I read Maria Montessori's book and that explained her goals and her methods in a highly abstract manner - it left me at a loss of how a Montessori class was conducted, how it operated day-to-day. In other words, I understood the theory, but I could not visualize the application.

This book explained the practical application should look like - ie:
1. what a Montessori class should look like when you're observing.
2. What/How your child will be guided on a day-to-day basis.
3. How to track his or her progress in the absence of a report card, etc.

Fabulous book explaining Montessori (especially Elementary level--the only book to do so in clear
terms. Excellent for parents considering Montessori
elementary.

I just reread it in a collection of Nobel Prize winning authors--their acceptance speeches etc., and this story and "As I Lay Dying" were chosen as examples of his work. This story!!! It's such a mundane little macabre "gotcha" story, over-anthologized for high school students (along with other tired stories like "The Most Dangerous Game"). Faulkner is such an incredible writer--I'm reading Fury in the Dust right now, and his sentences--the Nobel Prize committee described them as being "as powerful as Atlantic rollers". What was he thinking when he wrote "A Rose for Emily"? Obviously not much. Read anything else by him, you'll have a better time.

This is one of those books that are force on you at school. The basic story is of a Southern belle driven mad by isolation and her ties to the past. If this is your first reading of something representative of Faulkner this is the best example, as it is short and the story is intriguing. You can enjoy reading it for what it is and not have to analyze the thing to death. Even if you do not particularly cotton to Faulkner's style or subject matter, this book will transcend both. In 1982 they made this story into a movie with John Houseman and Anjelica Huston.

this book is about a very good short story on the changes of the south during a very representative period!

My son is in the first grade and reading at the top of his class. This book was sent home to him and he was told to read 2 chapters per day. I thought the first 4 chapters were fine until I got to chp. 5. I was appalled that you had the one of the characters in the story named Emily calling the teacher names(page33). Also in the chapter she was calling her teacher Mrs. Miller the Killer, Mrs Miller the killer gorilla. She called a girl ugly too. I am 33 years old and back in my time these books would have been fine. Seeing all of the violence today, we should be encouraging our kids not to call names etc. By reading this book you are encouraging students to disrespect adults and their peers, by calling them names which could eventually envoke violence. Most parents try hard to teach their children to respect everyone. Not call them names and disresepct adults or their peers. This story did neither. I would hope that you will relook at what you are writing and help encourage positive thinking in our children. We all know that children say alot of things but you are encouraging negative thoughts into them by printing things like this. I spoke with my son's teacher and explained that I know the teachers can't read every book but that I will continue to help ensure that my child or any other child not read things that are published like this, by making them aware of it. My sons teacher will not be reading the books published by Patricia Reilly Giff to her students and was glad I brought it to her attention. I will also be talking to the principal about these books. If you can I would like a response to my review.

The beauty about this series is that it breaks down people's prejudices. Each child featured has something odd about them that a reader can identify with. None of the characters are perfect...like real life. As the reader gets to know each character, he or she grows to love them...as do the other characters within the book. The story reflects life, it's sadness and its joys, and keeps you interested. There is always a lesson to be learned in each book in the Polk Street School Series. I do wish they credited the cover artist, as I worked so hard to do the book justice. My name is Joanne Scribner, and so far I've redone the covers for: December Secrets, Candy Corn Contest, The Beast In Ms. Rooney's Room, and Fish Face. I've also done new covers for: Snaggle Doodles, The Valentine Star, and The Dinosaur's Paw...coming out soon. As the cover artist is never named, (only the interior artist).....please look carefully, and you can tell who did the covers. Hope you enjoy this series. I'll keep working on the rest of the covers in the series for you...So please let me know what you think.

When I became an elementary teacher, the very first author a librarian recommended to me was Patricia Reilly Giff! And years later I am still reading her books with my students and enjoying them immensely. If you didn't like Fish Face, fine, but don't expunge all of Giff's great body of work. We're reading The Gift of the Pirate Queen right now and it's great. Patricia Reilly Giff, keep up the good work!

countless literary fiends have just flinched, i'm sure. something uneasy is crawling around under their skin, and they can't place it. little do they know it's merely me, baby-bashing a much-loved, canonized, idolized classic.

i read. i read a lot. i majored in creative writing and english because i loooove books and criticism. (does this pre-qualify me for faulkner? hardly, i'm just giving myself a few wobbly stilts worth of "reading credentials"). i armed myself. i knew it'd be tough. i'm unafraid to ask for help/use cliff notes, etc., and that's what i did.

it didn't help. oh sure, i understood it, but once unraveled it's just another incestous, suicidial, land obsessed, southern novel. i'm just not into books that take every ounce of my stamina to keep reading, books that make sense to no one but the author, and readers who've used the assistance of a zillion critics, who've spent lifetimes pouring over every single itty-bitty word in order to make some sense of it.

hooray for those who find the genius, hooray for faulkner for opening up doors that lead into hallways filled with self-induldgent experimental drivel, and self-induldgent brilliance.

i still didn't enjoy it. but i have to give it 3 stars because of where it took literature.

just be warned.

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"(Macbeth V.v 25-30) One day I was looking for a new book to read and I decided it was about time I read something by Faulkner. I knew nothing about Faulkner or Yoknapatawpha or The Compsons. All I knew was that he'd been compared to some of my favorite Southern writers: Tennessee Williams, Capote, and Barry Hannah. I am ever grateful that I read "The Sound And The Fury." I haven't been authentically moved in such a long time while reading. Reading each section is like reading a new book. I kept forgetting this was the same book. I've seen from the other reviews on Amazon.com that a lot of people have complained about the difficulty and stream-of-conscieness technique of the book. Well, all I can say is yes it is, I almost stopped reading this book half way through Benjy section but you have to work at it and the end result will be an amazing experience and great insight. I'm very tired of such lazy readers these days, they read ten pages of "Ulysses" and cry because they don't get the plot. If you really pay attention to the various scenes occurring throughout the Bengy sections you'll see reoccurring ones and by the end, you should be able to isolate each scene and understand it somewhat. I personally find the Quentin section the hardest to fathom. Rich in detail and thoughts often drifting one into the other. The ending of his section is perfection! It sums up the absurdities of life that is equal to Beckett and Camus. The Jason section shows the brutal side of The Compsons and the South. Once again showing how amazing Faulkner can shift view points so quickly and perfectly. The final section is told by the author but revolves mostly around the African-American slaves and Jason and Quentin's (Caddy's daughter) feud. I normally despise Cliff Notes but with this novel, they may be essential to most readers. The best part of the Cliff Notes is that they fully break down Bengy's section, scene-by-scene. Oh and make sure you get a copy of "The Sound And The Fury" that has Faulkner's appendix at the end. "The Sound And The Fury" is a story of struggle that touches the human heart and gives the reader fascinating insight into the human condition. Faulkner makes all his characters human, even the most repulsive like Jason Compson. Faulkner once said that he was just a man that tells folk tales and these tales bring us back to the impact of myth and reminds us of the fundamental human need to communicate and affect someone. Faulkner has deeply affected me spiritually and intellectually. I hope everyone will give this novel a chance sometime in their life. I've already started to dive into "As I Lay Dying" and I rarely read an author's work one after another.

I'm just finishing reading the Sound and the Fury for a college course in American Literature. Many people in my class either love this book or hate it, but I must say that it is the best book I have ever read. Faulkner breaks many of the rules we have learned about reading and writing, uses time order much in the way that the movie Pulp Fiction does, and shares the characters' experiences and thoughts through a stream of consciousness form of writing. This book is very unlike any I have read and is well worth the time it takes to understand it. Faulkner says in his introduction that in writing this book he learned how to read and I believe that in reading this book I have learned in a new way how to read.

I started reading Faulkner because I never did in school, and as a writer myself, it just felt like I ought to be able to say, "I've read Faulkner."
Well, he's not easy. They don't call him the Master of Repetition for nothin'!
But, of the 3-4 of his books I've read, this one is imminently readable, funny as only Faulkner can be funny, tragic and pathetic as only Faulker can be tragic and patheticand as always, it's a helluva good story.
If you've never read Faulkner before, start with this one.

For better or worse, this book has "modernism" written all over it. It pretty much dismisses with standard narrative and only loosely follows chronological order in favor of brief passages that reflect the state of mind of the characters of the Bundren family and their acquaintances in their struggle to get their recently deceased mother Addie into the coffin, across the flood-swollen river and into the county seat for a decent burial. (The technique is called "stream-of-consciousness.") Sometimes these character-driven monologues sound natural and unforced, as with youngest son Vardaman; at other times they are florid and literary, as with second son Darl. Faulkner was criticized for putting big words into the mouth of a semi-literate man, but such criticism wasn't really fair; he was simply using words as the medium for reflecting Darl's state of mind and it was kosher to use words that Darl didn't know to do so. Switching from one character to another gives a cinematic feel to the book--but it also can make the book rough going as the different perspectives sometimes lead to clashes in interpretation or outright disagreements. Also, to stir the stew, there is occasional humor (both black and regular) and Mom "speaks" at an unusual time.

Should this book be read? Definitely, and "The Sound and the Fury" is a great companion piece. Should it be held in the same reverence as it was by English departments throughout the USA between 1950 and 1980? Probably not, but if you pick it up with an open mind you won't be disappointed.

This book should be the first Faulkner you read. Not only is it glorious, but it's the best entry point into his writing style and his body of work. The reader is given the most cues to narrator and plot (pay attention to the chapter headings), and gets a taste of Faulkner's wonderful way of putting words together and his way of commenting on family relationships, purity, sex, and the South. As is standard Faulkner fare, it's utterly depressing but a book you can't stop reading and can't help but be glad you read. The characters are memorable, and their narration is wonderful, and As I Lay Dying is home to the famous and utterly breathtaking 5-word chapter (a line delivered by Vardamann that inevitably comes to mind whenever you think of the book later).

As I Lay Dying will put you in better stead to read Faulkner's other (and sometimes even better) works than anything else, and it's well worth the read in its own right. Afterwards, I would recommend reading The Sound and the Fury, which blew me away.

The financial success that Faulkner realized with the publication of "Sanctuary" made one thing very clear to the author: sex and violence would sell many books. And when in 1935, as he was at work on his monumental novel, "Absalom, Absalom," and needed a break from the complexities of that novel, he turned to pruriency once again in the hopes of making a few more easy dollars. But while many other authors would have fallen back on a tried and proven type of novel, Faulkner took his art to new areas. The novel is not set in Yoknapatawpha County, but in New Orleans (New Valois in the novel) and does not concern the interwoven family of characters that he had developed over the years, but a group of barnstorming aviators who follow the air race circuit across the country. There is the foolhardy pilot, his wife, a parachute jumper and a child who might be the issue of either man. That this menage a trois is carried out in the open and with the full complicity of all three members fascinates the newspaper reporter who is assigned to cover the air meet.

No doubt this is great stuff for the making of a sensational novel. But once again Faulkner fools his readers. While it is true that the novel has the tone of many of the contemporary crime novels of his day, Faulkner throws in enough Joycean word play, obscure symbolism, and obtuse prose to make it clear that, even when trying to make a buck, the author is playing by his own rules. The influence of T.S. Eliot is everywhere and there are obvious references to Eliot's "The Hollow Men," "The Waste Land" and "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" (one of the novel's chapters bears this title). Balanced against the literary experiments with which Faulkner was playing is a narrative that is full of excitement and sexual tension, including what surely is the first description of a "Mile High Club" encounter in literature.

This is a dark and pessimistic novel, one that looks at the uncertainty of American society created by the dehumanizing effects of the machine age. Character development is kept to a minimum and the reader never gets to know any of the characters very well. They are all, like Eliot's poem, merely hollow men adrift in an indifferent world. To enhance the general tone of malaise that permeates the novel, Faulkner sets the action during the hedonistic celebrations of Mardi Gras and the effect is startling as the reader is submerged in an atmosphere of drunkenness, aimlessness, sexual obsession, and death. But no matter how inventive the narrative style or how powerful some of the passages, the novel does not match up to Faulkner's mature fiction and is more a curiosity piece than anything else - a harrowing respite of sorts before the publication of "Absalom, Absalom."

This novelabout an aerial stunt tam and the reporter who gets involved with them is lightweight for Faulkner. It is better than anything that hack writers like Grisham King Clancy etc. have ever written with maybe a very few exceptions an there is enough of Faulkner operating at a high level to recommend it but it is at or near the bottom of his ouvre.

Faulkner's humor, even in such lighthearted books as the Reivers, could never be called madcap. Even when Lena hands Byron Bunch down from the truck bed as though he were an infant, the comedy is derived from a sense of startling humiliation and debasement. That or it's as dark as shoe polish. This latter option is the case in Pylon, which, despite its overall gravity, has many funny moments.

The story: An unnamed reporter in New Valois, some forgotten hamlet with the sole distinction of having a regulation airport that hosts diverting but empty and pretentiously-hyped plane races. This reporter discovers a polyganous relationship between one pilot (Roger Schumman) and Laverne, whose shared son is of dubious origin. Then, as always happens in a Faulkner novel, a great, sinuous spate of events kicks in. The reporter is fired from his job (only to be rehired later) for obsessing over his new crew at the expense of his correspondence. Later, the reporter embezzles a considerable sum from his office (this in addition to many times cadging money from his boss) to pay for a dangerous plane for Roger to fly against the owner's wishes. Roger dies, the child falls by mother's indifference to the custody of the paternal grandparents.

Faulkner has, to my knowledge, never written a bad book. This good, but often spotty book comes the closest to out-and-out failure as any work in the Faulkner canon of which I know. I agree with an earlier reviewer, though: I'd sooner read Faulkner or Turgenev than the [stuff] most writers call popular fiction these days.