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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
I really liked Wise Blood when I read it but it felt flatter than I had expected from such a famous author. However, this short story collection is incredible. The vibes are absolutely terrible and everyone is the worst!
A View of the Woods > Everything that Rises Must Converge > The Enduring Chill > Greenleaf > The Comforts of Home > The Lame Shall Enter First > Revelation = Parker's Back = Judgement Day
A View of the Woods > Everything that Rises Must Converge > The Enduring Chill > Greenleaf > The Comforts of Home > The Lame Shall Enter First > Revelation = Parker's Back = Judgement Day
A bunch of the vilest, most miserably racist people you can imagine wander about saying horrible things, committing horrible acts and eventually suffering horrible fates and all the while they have no idea what awful people they are. Not a single nice thing happens to anyone. And I loved every single page. This is my new favourite O'Connor.
I've never read any Flannery O'Connor before, so I had no idea what to expect from this. These short stories are gritty and brutally real. I'm a hundred years, people will read this and say, "Wow, did people ever really talk like that and act like that?" I haven't spent much time in the South, but this appears to be a very vivid and realistic portrait of life.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was unfinished at the time of O'Connor's death. Some of the stories are much better than others. She portrays the "old" South of narrow mindedness, and prejudice. The audiobook has several different narrators. This book has prompted me, though, to read more O'connor.
My first Flannery O‘Connor. Each short story packs a heavy wallop; seems like the pattern here is the consequences (often terrible) of a particular character clinging to their old set of values and beliefs despite a changing South. This stubbornness soon figuratively hobbles them (or just plain kills them). As with all good books, there is much more to be gleaned, but that will have to take a second reading.
reflective
fast-paced
At the age of 5, Flannery O'Connor had taught her chicken to walk backwards, such a sight was this (and one can only imagine) that O'Connor and her chicken made it on the news and she once said that everything from there was anticlimactic. When I read about this, I surprisingly wasn't shocked, having read her stories, a young O'Connor teaching a chicken to walk backwards wasn't strange or fantastic because I had seen her work, when I read it, it felt very typical of Flannery O'Connor.
O'Connor is a genius. This book is quite the showing of elaborate craft. With each story, O'Connor delves into life, unsympathizing, with quite the bunch of flawed characters in each story.
Having been born and raised in Georgia, USA, pre-Civil Rights movement, it's not a surprise how much race and prejudice are factors in her stories. What surprised me is that the black characters in her stories aren't explored as the white characters, and they hardly speak unless forced to, let alone do we know of their thoughts and fears like the white characters. Flannery O'Connor once said about black souls, that "I can only see them from the outside. I wouldn't have the courage... to go inside their heads". Which explains why the black characters in her stories are only observed.
About every white character is racist and prejudiced. For instance in the story "Revelation", the main character Mrs Ruby Turpin believes herself in a better position because she is Christian, white and not poor white trash. A religious conflict stirring within her when she takes it as a message from God, a violent girl hurls a book at her and chocks and tells her, " Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog" instead of a " white trash" woman seated in the same room. And in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Julian's mother, isn't be able to get in a bus by herself because she's afraid and uncomfortable sharing a bus with black people.
Besides this, Flannery O'Connor incredibly describes strained familial relationships, (fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, sister and brother). For the most part " intellectual" sons are embittered against their mother's for their racism and ignorance like in "Greenleaf", " Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "The Enduring Chill". Fathers ignoring their children and being unable to connect with them like in "The Lame Shall Enter First".
This book, finally, is one of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. All stories are ripped of idealism, but filled with such charge that I would sometimes walk around my room while reading.
O'Connor is a genius. This book is quite the showing of elaborate craft. With each story, O'Connor delves into life, unsympathizing, with quite the bunch of flawed characters in each story.
Having been born and raised in Georgia, USA, pre-Civil Rights movement, it's not a surprise how much race and prejudice are factors in her stories. What surprised me is that the black characters in her stories aren't explored as the white characters, and they hardly speak unless forced to, let alone do we know of their thoughts and fears like the white characters. Flannery O'Connor once said about black souls, that "I can only see them from the outside. I wouldn't have the courage... to go inside their heads". Which explains why the black characters in her stories are only observed.
About every white character is racist and prejudiced. For instance in the story "Revelation", the main character Mrs Ruby Turpin believes herself in a better position because she is Christian, white and not poor white trash. A religious conflict stirring within her when she takes it as a message from God, a violent girl hurls a book at her and chocks and tells her, " Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog" instead of a " white trash" woman seated in the same room. And in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Julian's mother, isn't be able to get in a bus by herself because she's afraid and uncomfortable sharing a bus with black people.
Besides this, Flannery O'Connor incredibly describes strained familial relationships, (fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, sister and brother). For the most part " intellectual" sons are embittered against their mother's for their racism and ignorance like in "Greenleaf", " Everything That Rises Must Converge" and "The Enduring Chill". Fathers ignoring their children and being unable to connect with them like in "The Lame Shall Enter First".
This book, finally, is one of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. All stories are ripped of idealism, but filled with such charge that I would sometimes walk around my room while reading.