As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

"My mother is a fish."

This book was an interesting twist for me because of my own family dynamics. I'd always considered my father's side of the family to exceptionally apathetic, but this was nothing compared the the Bundrens.
It's a sort of pragmatic apathy they have that affects their attitude towards Addie Brunden's death. Her husband becomes a broken record looking forward to the new set of teeth he can have now that she's gone.
Her sons are concerned about farming business and treat the pending pilgrimage that would take their mother to be buried in her home town as just another chore.
My gut reaction was to say Dewey Dell's reaction was the more realistic one. To be fair, it was the expected reaction. There's a stereotype for grieving, whether anyone recognizes it or not. And the Brunden boys definately didn't fit this stereotype. Although I suppose it could be said that little Vardaman was quite deeply effected by his mother's death.

And despite this tragedy, the boys moved on with their life. Although one has to wonder about Addie. All the while I'm reading this book, I've already pigeon-holed the empathetic characters that I feel should succeed in this and the cold and indifferent characters I feel should have some sort of epiphany during this journey. But when I got to the flashback chapters, I learned about a whole new Addie. For some reason, up until those chapters, I was wanting to believe that Addie was the sane one. One of the empathetic ones but they lost her and now the family's gone to hell. And considering she'd requested that her dying body be perched in such a way that she could see her son, Cash the carpenter, working on her own coffin. Sound morbid? You betcha. But that's the kind of family they are.
The story's told in that stream-of-consciousness style that Faulkner's so well known for. He rotates each chapter from point of view to point of view. And we get Vardaman's classic chapter: "My mother is a fish".
From a writer's stand point, the point of view trick is an excellent one. It creates a lot of unreliable narratives that add depth to all of the characters.
The ending is the ultimate shocker. I don't want to spoil it for anyone save to say it's a bit of a jaw dropper.