Published in
April 1940 by
Random House, the
Hamlet is the first book in the Snopes trilogy by
William Faulkner. The other two books in the
trilogy are
The Town and
The Mansion. It follows the rise of one particular Snope, Flem, who cons the town, Frenchman's Bend, and rises from the son of a
sharecropper to a storekeeper and even higher. Will Varner, the rich local landowner, is at odds with the
poor Snopes family. However, he ends up helping Flem to rise when Flem marries Eula, Varner's daughter.
Eula, at the time of
marriage, is
pregnant with
another man's child. This doesn't matter to Flem, who marries her because of her father's money and power.
Many of Faulkner's earlier short stories were incorporated into this book.
I read this book for a|Livermore reading group, and I had a lot of trouble getting through it. Faulkner writes extremely long sentences. covering one to two pages. It's hard not to get lost.