Okay, I need to confess something. This is not my usual listen. This is not a comfort read. This is not a book that survived 47 pauses and still made sense. This is a book that barely survived ZERO pauses and still had me squinting at the steering wheel going "wait, whose thoughts am I inside right now?"
So why did I listen to it? Because my friend from college texted me out of nowhere: "You were an English major, Rachel. When's the last time you read something that actually challenged you?" And I was like, rude. But also... fair. My audiobook library is wall-to-wall rom-coms and cozy mysteries and I love them, but sometimes you need to remember that your brain used to do hard things. I picked up Curse of Beaton Hall last month for exactly that reason - it's not Faulkner, but it scratched that same itch for something with a little more going on under the surface than my usual picks. Before it got rewired by Bluey episodes and snack negotiations.
Benjy's Section Almost Broke Me (And Not in the Good Way)
Let me just be honest. The first section of this book - Benjy's stream-of-consciousness narration - is WILD on audio. Benjy is a 33-year-old man with an intellectual disability, and his perspective jumps between past and present with zero warning. On the page, Faulkner used italics to signal time shifts. In audio? You get nothing. You're just riding along with Grover Gardner's steady, measured voice and suddenly you're in a completely different decade and you have no idea how you got there. It's like when Sophie hides the TV remote and you find it in the refrigerator. Disorienting. Nonsensical. And weirdly, kind of brilliant once you stop fighting it.
Gardner does his best to differentiate the time periods through subtle shifts in tone, but I'll be real - during school drop-off, with Emma arguing about whether she needed her jacket and Lucas refusing to unbuckle, I lost the thread about fifteen times. This is NOT a multitasking book. This is a sit-in-your-car-in-the-garage-with-your-eyes-closed book, and even then, good luck.
Grover Gardner Carries This Thing on His Back
Here's what surprised me: Gardner's narration grew on me hard. He has this warm, unhurried Southern tone that feels like sitting on a porch you've never been invited to. His Jason Compson voice - that bitter, mean, petty fourth section - is genuinely chilling. Jason's casual cruelty toward his niece Quentin, the way he hoards money and resentment in equal measure, Gardner reads him with this clipped, sneering energy that made me grip the steering wheel. I actually said "you absolute monster" out loud in the pickup line.
But his Quentin section (the second part, set at Harvard the day Quentin decides to end his life) is where Gardner really earns it. The pacing slows. The sentences unspool and loop back on themselves - Quentin obsessing over his sister Caddy's virginity, over time, over that watch his father gave him. Gardner reads it almost dreamily, which is perfect because Quentin is basically dissociating his way through his last day alive. It's devastating. Made me cry at school pickup. Worth it though. (Emma asked if I was okay. I told her allergies. She didn't buy it.)
The Southern accent thing - some reviewers found it grating. I actually thought it worked. These are Mississippi people in the early 1900s. It should sound a certain way. What DID bother me were some uneven sound levels in my version; quiet passages suddenly got noticeably louder in the Dilsey section, which startled me awake during nap time. Not ideal.
This Book Hates You and You Should Try It Anyway
Look. This is not a book I'd normally recommend to anyone in my life. It's dense. It's deliberately confusing. There's no satisfying ending - the Compson family just keeps crumbling, and you watch it from four different angles. The structure requires your full attention, which is a luxury I literally do not have most days.
But something about it stuck with me in a way my usual reads don't. The way Faulkner writes about time - how we carry our entire past with us every second, how memory isn't linear but floods in based on a smell or a sound - that hit different as a parent. Benjy smells the trees and he's three years old again, reaching for his sister through a fence. And I'm standing in Sophie's room smelling her baby shampoo knowing she won't be this small again, and suddenly Faulkner's stream of consciousness doesn't feel experimental. It feels like the truest way anyone's ever described how memory actually works.
I did NOT finish this in a week. It took me closer to two and a half, and I restarted Benjy's section twice. At 1.25x speed, the Quentin section loses something - I actually slowed down to 1x for that part, which is unheard of for me.
Who This Is For (Honestly)
Not for multitasking moms. I'm sorry. If you need something that survives constant interruption, this ain't it. But if you used to love literature - like really love it, back when you had time and brain cells - and you want to remember what it feels like to read something that rearranges your insides? Carve out the time. Use your car time. Lock the bathroom door. Whatever you need.
Not groundbreaking to say Faulkner is great. But hearing it instead of reading it? That was new for me. And Grover Gardner made me understand things about this book I missed in college when I was 20 and thought I was smart.
The Book My English Professor Would Be Proud I Finally Revisited
My book club will love this - if I ever have time for book club again. And if my book club suddenly got very ambitious and stopped reading Emily Henry. (We won't. But still.)
