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A Death in the Family

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A Death in the Family

By: James Agee
Narrated by: Lloyd James
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Decades 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.

©1938 1956, 1957 by the James Agee Trust. 1957 by the New Yorker Magazine, Inc. 1985 by Mia Agee (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Classics Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

"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." (Andre Dubus, author of Dancing after Hours)
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