SOURCE: Vancil, David E. “Redemption according to Ernest Gaines.” African American Review 28, no. 3 (fall 1994): 489-91.

In the following review, Vancil assesses the effect of the ironic point of view on the themes of A Lesson before Dying.

A Lesson before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines's fifth adult novel, is the Louisiana writer's most compelling work to date. Gaines worked on this book for almost ten years, doing most of the writing in San Francisco during the summer months between stints as a professor on the English faculty at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and engagements elsewhere. Because of the demands on his time and perhaps because of the demands created by the multiple levels of irony in the book, Gaines despaired of ever finishing this, the best novel of his career.

Readers of Gaines's previous novels, including A Gathering of Old Men and the deservedly famous Autobiography of Miss...