Elizabeth J. Church is the author of the novels The Atomic Weight of Love and All the Beautiful Girls. One of four books that changed the author, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:AS I LAY DYINGRead about another entry on the list.
William Faulkner
By now my tendency toward what most perceive as bleak should be obvious. But it is Faulkner's powerful depiction of Southern culture, the vernacular, and his highly original characters that linger and instruct me as a writer. When I read Faulkner, I feel the heat, the oppressive humidity; I smell the grass, the earth. Faulkner sees things fromevery angle. He respects his readers enough to challenge us and make us work – I adore that.
As I Lay Dying is on Jesmyn Ward's list of six favorite books featuring absent parents, Emily Ruskovich's top ten list of rural American novels, Jeff Somers's top five list of books written in very unlikely places, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's list of eight of the most badass ladies in all of banned literature, Nicole Hill's lists of nine of the biggest martyrs in fiction and five books that, like country and western songs, tell "stories of agony and ecstasy, soaring highs and mighty powerful lows, heartache and hard living," Laura Frost's list of the ten best modernist books (in English), Helen Humphreys's top ten list of books on grieving, John Mullan's list of ten of the best teeth in literature, Jon McGregor's list of the top ten dead bodies in literature, Roy Blount Jr.'s list of five favorite books of Southern humor, and James Franco's six best books list.
The “My mother is a fish.” chapter in As I Lay Dying is among the ten most notorious parts of famous books according to Gabe Habash.
--Marshal Zeringue
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