Lie Down in Darkness

Very mixed feelings about this one.

It took me four months to the day to get through this. It was never bad, per se; I got to 70% complete fairly quickly, and then stalled out for a good long time. I have a rule for myself that I'm allowed to quit a book partway through if I find I'm not going back to read it and I'm just not feeling any drive to, but I did want to finish this. Just not enough to, you know, do it.

This is something of a Southern Gothic classic, the debut novel by the author of Sophie's Choice, and concerns itself with the gradual, tragic implosion of a southern Virginia family. It starts out readable enough, but as the family becomes increasingly in disarray, so did the prose. Dialogue especially often felt unnatural to me.

There are precious few sympathetic characters, which probably accounts for the difficulty I had getting through. I found myself increasingly misanthropic as I progressed through, but mostly just felt bad for the whole family.

The highlight of the book, so to speak, is the section at nearly the very end, told from Peyton's perspective. That is, it's the best written passage in the book, not that it's a pleasant experience. It's so crushingly depressing it was hard to get through – heartbreaking, brilliantly awful stuff.

I don't know that I can say I recommend this one. It's at its best when it's at its worst.