A Death in the Family

By James Agee

Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction 1958

James Agee was only 6 years old when his father was killed in a car crash. In this novel, he revisits that time in a fictionalized form. James Agee also died suddenly, of a heart attack at age 45 in 1955, leaving his very young children without their father. This last novel of his was published posthumously.
The first part of the novel is a prose poem called Knoxville: Summer 1915.
I am not a fan of prose poems and I found this section repetitive and sort of irritating, especially as the author goes on and on about the watering of the grass.
The subject of the novel is plainly stated in its title, A Death in the Family. The father has to travel to another town because his father is very ill and may be dying. On his way back home after seeing his father, the man is killed in a car crash, just like Agee's own father. The rest of the story is about how the man's family, his wife and two small children, react to his death. The story only covers a few days and ends on the evening the man is buried. There is a schism within the family, the man who died and the mother's father and brother are essentially not religious, but the mother and her sister and mother are. Some of the story deals with the schism. A lot of it concerns the dead man's little boy and his thoughts and actions as related to losing his father.

If this wasn't a Pulitzer Prize winner I would have never picked it to read. This is not the sort of story I care for, this meditation in loss. I don't care for introspective subjects and especially I don't care for stories about religion.
This is not to say this is a bad novel. I can see where many readers would enjoy and appreciate it. I am sure it is a very worthy book. I am just glad I never have to read it again. :)

Review by John H. Fincher in The Harvard Crimson:    http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1957/12/5/james-agees-a-death-in-the/.