The Reivers - William Faulkner Audiobook

Written by William Faulkner
Read by John H. Mayer
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: December 18, 2007
Duration: 11:22:22

This is a grandfather’s story.

One of Faulkner’s comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi.

The story centers on a car. It’s 1905 and cars are little more than a novelty. Lucius Priest’s Grandfather owns one. Eleven-year-old Lucius is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family’s retainers, to steal his grandfather’s car and make a trip to Memphis when all the adults in the family leave town by train for a funeral. Lucius, the needed voice of reason, has difficulty fighting the lure of the road. He’s tortured by his behavior but at each step, he’s committed to moving further on in the plan.

The Priest’s black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which thy are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba’s bordello in Memphis. From there a series of wild misadventures ensues—involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriff’s deputies, and jail.

The charm and comedy of this novel is conveyed in Faulkner’s complex language. The novel is hilarious. One review wrote – “Now lest it seem this is too serious a story, I must recommend a moment that needs to be read, Ned’s hierarchy of animals, rating rats, mules, horses, cats and dogs in order by their usefulness and degree of “parasitic” nature upon man. “

There was a movie made of this book in 1969, starring Steve McQueen

A reiver? from reive a verb (used with or without object), reived, reiving. Chiefly Scot. to rob; plunder.