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A review by garlicgab
Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters by Sally Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor
4.0
I did not read all of this book, but I'm going to count it finished for now. Flannery O'Connor is a great writer, but she has like one theme (that belief in God is inevitable, and most often occurs with or after a gruesome event) and she repeats this theme in varying ways. I'm sure I would have appreciated all of her stories, but trying to read all of them at once burnt me out a bit. Southern Gothic is exactly accurate, unsettling characters and settings, and unsettling ends for a lot of them. People getting what they wanted in the wrong way. Deeply, deeply Catholic.
Wise Blood was absolutely wild, I loved it. I read later that it is a mishmash of four of her other short stories, and the disconnect between all of the stories does come through, but in an enjoyable way. Keeps you on your toes. Enoch is a real one.
Of course, A Good Man is so sad, but I felt I had a deeper understanding of the story and its symbols than I did when I first read it. I really appreciated it (saying that I "liked" it feels too blasé. too casual and too upbeat). From her letters (p. 1150), O'Connor says:
I was also particularly affected by The River (very sad), A Stroke of Good Fortune (one of her more comedic stories), Everything That Rises Must Converge (felt so much secondhand embarrassment while reading this story), and Greenleaf (also more comedic, but dark). I quit after The View of The Woods because that one was too much, too dark without any redemption. It was genuinely upsetting and I recommend future readers skip it.
Stories/Novels Read:
- Wise Blood
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find
- The River
- The Life You Save May Be Your Own
- A Stroke of Good Fortune
- A Temple of the Holy Ghost
- A Circle in the Fire
- A Late Encounter with the Enemy
- Good Country People
- The Displaced Person
- Everything That Rises Must Converge
- Greenleaf
- A View of the Woods
Wise Blood was absolutely wild, I loved it. I read later that it is a mishmash of four of her other short stories, and the disconnect between all of the stories does come through, but in an enjoyable way. Keeps you on your toes. Enoch is a real one.
Of course, A Good Man is so sad, but I felt I had a deeper understanding of the story and its symbols than I did when I first read it. I really appreciated it (saying that I "liked" it feels too blasé. too casual and too upbeat). From her letters (p. 1150), O'Connor says:
"About that grandmother and the Misfit: it is the fact that the old lady's gesture is the result of grace that makes it right that the Misfit shoot her. Grace is never received warmly. Always a recoil , or so I think."
I was also particularly affected by The River (very sad), A Stroke of Good Fortune (one of her more comedic stories), Everything That Rises Must Converge (felt so much secondhand embarrassment while reading this story), and Greenleaf (also more comedic, but dark). I quit after The View of The Woods because that one was too much, too dark without any redemption. It was genuinely upsetting and I recommend future readers skip it.
Stories/Novels Read:
- Wise Blood
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find
- The River
- The Life You Save May Be Your Own
- A Stroke of Good Fortune
- A Temple of the Holy Ghost
- A Circle in the Fire
- A Late Encounter with the Enemy
- Good Country People
- The Displaced Person
- Everything That Rises Must Converge
- Greenleaf
- A View of the Woods