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The classic American novel—winner of the 1958 Pulitzer Prize—now re-published for the 100th anniversary of James Agee’s birth

One of Time’s All-Time 100 Best Novels

A Penguin Classic

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.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Centennial edition (September 29, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 310 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014310571X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143105718
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 940L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.05 x 0.55 x 7.75 inches
Reviewer: anya leone
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Best book ever
Review: This is one of the most touching books I've ever read. Agee has the greatest knack of talking in the language of the character under examination. His attention to minute detail brings the picture of what the characters see and do and feel in a way that I find rather profound. The language is never coarse or overly broad. You never have to guess what a sentence is conveying, it is so literate yet to the point. For instance, Agee names all the mourners, just the way a child would who was watching them pass by one by one, and creates an atmosphere of the burden of sadness but not understanding why the burden is put forth.Young Rufus' character and personality come across as the most touching of all. He is a young boy starting to mature but still captured in childhood, and trying to understand people and their behaviors toward him, trying to trust but knowing and feeling puzzled by the things people do to him to destroy that trust. And learning he can't trust himself either. Everyone can relate to his trials in this regard. All the folks who populate this book are folks you'd want to know more about. But the most touching aspect of all is the way Agee lets you know just how the death of one impacts so many, so very many others; how it hurts, how it forces growth, how much sadness it generates. I couldn't put it down. And my tears still flow thinking about it.

Reviewer: Dawn Fitts
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good book!
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories about the dynamics within a family following a death. Rufus comes across as a sympathetic character to me.

Reviewer: Daniel Myers
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Death Not Quite Literary
Review: Imagine, if you will, a group of family members, sitting around a recently deceased corpse arguing religion and theodicy - strong, literary, atheistic men on one side, weaker, pious women on the other- with the piquancy that only a recent death of one close to them all could possibly have brought about. Then, add to this a little boy looking upon all this and trying to make sense of it all, while trying to come to terms with his father's death. You now have the setting, if not the summary, of this book.The men reflect on Thomas Hardy and Macbeth (Joel) and Shelley (Andrew) while the women mumble prayers and are bullied by a priest. When they first learn of the death Joel ruminates about his falling out with his wife, Hannah, that, "...Besides, that had never been the real estrangement; it was the whole stinking morass of churchliness that really separated them, and now that was apt to get worse rather than better. Apt? Dead certain to." And Joel is correct, it is "dead certain" to get worse. And it does.Agee portrays the women sympathetically, but as essentially weak, pulling out old rosaries and succumbing to a sanctimonious priest who keeps a figurative whip of morality beneath his soutane and true viciousness under his unctuous smile. The widow, Mary, is finally defeated thusly: "For before, she had at least been questioning, however gently. But now she was wholly defeated and entranced, and the transition to prayer was the moment and mark of her surrender."The book does manage to convey of how terrible and heart-rending it is to deal with mortality through the autobiographical prose-poems in the mind of the boy, Rufus: "That this little boy whom he inhabited was only the cruelest of deceits. That he was but the nothingness of nothingness, condemned by some betrayal. That yet in that desolation, he was not without companions. For featureless on the abyss, invincible, moved monstrous intuitions. And from the depth and wide throat of eternity burned the cold, delirious chuckle of rare monsters beyond rare monsters, cruelty beyond cruelty."It's all a bit plodding and belaboured for my taste, strong stuff for a lad. Agee, here and in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, just couldn't seem to fashion from his work a convincing world. So many different worlds and styles war with another within the book that one is scarcely surprised at all that he died with it incomplete.Perhaps, as so many proclaim, this work is a masterpiece. But I myself just don't see it. There are some fine lines and paragraphs which, taken alone, are quite stellar. But plodding through this morass of death and religiosity, this mishmash of styles, does not comport with my experience of reading a masterwork.Please, feel free to disagree.

Reviewer: Patrick
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Unique and beautifully described emotion
Review: What truly stood out for me in this story was the way Agee describes the thoughts and emotions of the characters. From Catherine and Rufus to Mary, Uncle Andrew, and Grandpa, the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters is beautifully descriptive and incredibly realistic. What a great story.

Reviewer: Ed Arnold
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More Than I Could Handle
Review: I have read the list of Pulitzer Prize winners many times, thinking that if a book is a winner it must be somewhat worthwhile. I always came across A Death in the Family by James Agee, which I spurned because of the title. I didn't want to go there, the saddest of all human experiences. But finally I did. I could say that it is a beautifully written book, which it is. I could say that it is a work of art, which it is. I could also say that a work of art can lift you as high as you can go or shatter your soul, depending on what you bring to it. Well, I almost lost my daughter last year and I lost my mother a few months ago, and I wasn't emotionally equipped to handle this book. It left me shattered. I would definitely say you should read this book. It is not Faulkner or Styron by any means, but it has to be in the top ten of books written by a Southerner. But I warn you. Read it when you yourself are not having emotional distress. Otherwise, it just might be more than you can handle.

Reviewer: Thomas
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great read!
Review: A great look at family interactions in the early 20th century in handling grief. Detailed and touching. My second time to read and no doubt will read it again in the future. Tom C.

Reviewer: Cynthia
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Have tissues close by.
Review: Agee's book is about loss, or should I say LOSS. The main character suffers the loss of the most important, or at least one of, the most important people in her life. She leans on the love of her family and God but even with those loves she's still essentially alone and lost in pain. Unfortunately most of us old folks have weathered such losses and gotten through them somehow. It's hard to let the loss make you a better, more loving, a stronger person but the only other alternative is to become hard or bitter. I've always thought that if I have to go through it I might as well look for the treasures in the pain.....things like greater compassion, ability to understand those you come into contact with rather than be understood by others, and mostly to stay or increase your ability to love yourself, others, your God, to value the eternal as well as the human.

Reviewer: Aditya Sinha
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Agee wrote a fine book about the disruption an event has on a collection of people, especially the children. Not light reading, but one of those books that give you a glimpse into the human condition. A work of art.

Reviewer: Brooke Fieldhouse
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Characters, situation, and plot are the usual priorities critics use when discussing a novel. Structure often barely gets a look in, which is what makes James Agee’s A Death in the Family such an unusual book. The entire narrative consists of one event – the death in a car crash of Jay Follet – the few hours before it, and its immediate aftermath. The event is told by several different characters; Jay himself, his wife Mary, her Aunt Hannah, her brother Andrew, her two children Rufus and Catherine, and for a brief few passages, her parents.These aren’t different versions of the same event they are different points of view. The narrative keeps running, it’s just being run in relays by different individuals, and it gives the reader the impression that everything is happening in ‘real’ time, and its only at the end of the book where the time needed for the various funeral arrangements is speeded up in the last fifty or so pages.Because it feels like what we’re reading is happening in real time it’s all the more frustrating to witness each event and emotion portrayed in fine detail, such as the what seems to be ‘crying of wolf’ by Jay’s drunken brother Ralph, and that Jay’s father is not at death’s door, and that the car journey in the early hours of the morning was never necessary in the first place. There are beautiful atmospherics. Part of the car journey involves taking a ferry. Jay is lucky…doesn’t have to wait long in the dark for the ferryman, but when they arrive on the other side of the river Jay sees there’s a farmer and his wife who’ve been waiting for hours, shouting in vain into the dark for the ferryman, with their produce for a market for which they will now be late. It’s this frustration and excruciating sensation which the reader feels as every component of the narrative as it is revealed to us. Tiny details involving the consumption and preparation of eggs and hot milk by Mary before Jay’s useless car journey. Jay’s death is no spoiler because its all in the blurb on the back of the book!There are two elements which serve to counterpoint the misery of the experience of the adults. The first is the fascinating and unusual insertion into the narrative of three internal monologues (in italics) in Rufus’ voice. The first in advance of Part 1, the second at the end of Part 1, and the third at the end of Part 2 (there are 3 parts in total). Agee’s novel was published posthumously and these additions were found with the main manuscript – but with no indication from the author as to exactly where they might belong in the narrative. The second element which in my view gives this novel a sky-high lift to the reader’s enjoyment, is the events seen through the eyes of the two children. So often in literature the child’s view confirms to the reader how awful it is being a child. We get that, but what we also are given is a view which is of a dimension so different from the adult that I guarantee that in spite of the gravity of events you will giggle, you will chuckle!

Reviewer: Gembro
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Why hadn't I heard of this man? This is writing of superior quality. Through the detailed exposition of the events surrounding the death of one man in a car accident, and the impact it has on his family, Agee pierces the heart of the human condition. Such simple, achingly moving and precise prose resonates with the depth of a large bell softly struck.

Reviewer: Rawiron
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Read at a slow pace, but easy to pick up the thread again. A child's view on death that is very insightful. Would recommend.

Reviewer: robert carr smith
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A beautifully written account of family grief and subsequent coping