There's an underlying streak of really black humour in here that I enjoyed - the air-holes that went through the coffin and into Addie's face, the insistence of the youngest child that his dead mother is a fish, and the introduction at the end (which I will not spoil, but which is absolutely of a piece with the man making it). It's a book that slowly pulls you in, but I'm also deeply grateful that it's relatively short, because the characterisations, while done well within their limits, are extraordinarily narrow. Every member of this deeply unlikeable family is given one character trait to distinguish them from the hydra-like incapacity of their near relations, and Faulkner hammers those single traits over and over... and over. He's so unsubtle with it that I'm sick of them all long before the book is over, and if I had had to read Cash yammering on about coffins and building and wood for a single page more I would have started burning things down.

Really the only impression I'm left with is that Addie is likely glad that she's dead, if only because she's leaving this family of idiots behind her. Also, she is a fish with holes in her face.