Wild Palms

'Between grief and nothing I will take grief'

In New Orleans in 1937, a man and woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed with fatal injuries of the spirit.

Review: There is no writer living who can play upon a scene the rich and Rembrandtesque flame that Faulkner commands * Evening Standard *

His prose style is all his own, often sensuously alert, evocative, graceful * Daily Telegraph *

Lays to rest any doubts that Faulkner could write a powerful love story * Washington Post *

There is an extraordinary vigor and power in his writing, a feverish urge toward description in which words combine in a dense web of meaning * Chicago Tribune *