Rating: 
Summary: A childhood adventure
Review: William Faulkner had previously won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949, and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (in 1955 for "A Fable"). This novel won him a second Pulitzer Prize. It was published in 1962, the year of his death.The novel is written in the style of an older man reminiscencing about his youth. Some of the individual sentences ramble and digress, as do some parts of the story, put gradually the plot moves forward. Not everyone will like the writing style. I found the beginning of the novel hard to get into; but as the plot progressed it was hard to put down.
It is written as a first person narrative with some dialogue. The setting is in May 1905. Lucius Priest is an 11-year old boy living in a Mississippi town about 80 miles from Memphis, normally a two day drive over dirt roads if it's not raining and the roads are dry. Boon Hogganbeck, of somewhat unknown ancestry, was more or less inherited by the Priest family and works in the family's livery stable as the night man when he is not acting as the driver of an automobile purchased by Lucius's grandfather, a banker in the town. Ned McCaslin is the black coachman for the family. When the adults in the family are called away to the Gulf coast for a funeral, Boon, Lucius, and Ned "borrow" the grandfather's automobile to make a trip to Memphis where they stay overnight in a bordello that Boon has visited in the past. Things become complicated when Ned trades the automobile for a stolen racehorse. Ned has a way with animals, and sees potential in the horse (which has previously lost all of its races). The plot has an interesting ending, and Ned is smarter than people may have thought. Along the way, Lucius learns to drive the automobile, defends a woman's honor, and learns a lot about life that he would never have learned in school.
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