A Death in the Family: A Novel - Softcover

Agee, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143115847 ISBN 13: 9780143115847

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2008

Synopsis

The American classic—now available from Penguin for the first time

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident—a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.

About this title

From the Publisher:

James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Death In The Family is the powerful, moving story of a universal human situation. It tells of a loving and closely-knit family--and of their great courage when tragedy changes senselessly and suddenly the lives of those who are left behind.

"Maturely and masterfully, Agee accomplished a book which touches one deeply and which no reader will forget." -- New York Herald Tribune Book Review

From the Inside Flap:

Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.

On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.

"An utterly individual and original book...one of the most deeply worked out expressions of human feeling that I have ever read."--Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review

"It is, in the full sense, poetry....The language of the book, at once luminous and discreet...remains in the mind."--New Republic

"People I know who read A Death in the Family forty years ago still talk about it. So do I. It is a great book, and I'm happy to see it done anew."--Andre Dubus, author of Dancing After Hours and Meditations From A Moveable Chair
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0143115847
• ISBN 13: 9780143115847
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320