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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
Every Flannery O’Connor story you read, you know something bad, cruel, wicked, even devilish is going to happen, and yet all the times she surprises you with something worse, more cruel, wicked, or devilish than you could even imagine.
It's absurd for me to dare to rate Flannery. She's amazing.
Maybe death and emotional destruction is just too much for my current mood, but I couldn't get into these stories. It didn't help that they all ended the same way.
I would give this book 4.5 stars. The writing was excellent, and I truly enjoyed each story (rarely the case with a short story collection). However, after reading the first three or four stories, I started to get annoyed at the "shocking" deaths that ended each of them. I actually laughed at the end of one because it was just getting ridiculous. Despite that, this was a very strong collection and a great introduction to Flannery O'Connor. I look forward to reading more of her work.
Flannery O'Conner: celebrated thinly veiled racist or unapologetic prophet of her time? I still don't have an answer to that question but I'm definitely intrigued. The narrators of the audiobook were so captivating and the stories and characters were so Southern Gothicly grotesque that it kept me coming back for more with each story. However, I'm still not sure how to reconcile the role of blacks and the use of the N-word throughout.
I feel the deep need to read something light and happy...
I feel the deep need to read something light and happy...
O'Connor is so talented, I kept notes while I read her short stories to attempt to make some small effort at emulating her masterful way of creating characters that are true to life with just the right amount of exaggeration to make her point. Such a gifted writer who left us too early, but left behind beautiful gifts in the writing she was able to complete.
4 stars
Just a note that I've only read the title story, so this review will only cover this! This was read for my Creative Writing class my freshman year of college.
I honestly loved how O'Connor writes! Her technique is absolutely amazing, she explores the ingrained racism in the minds of non-black individuals. Julian is a young man taking his mother to a reducing class at the local YMCA, and along their journey to the class, he and his mother have a silent battle over her racist beliefs.
While this makes Julian appear like the hero and his mother the villain, there is no clear-cut good and bad in this story. Rather, the villain is the rooted racism from the time of slavery. Julian may seem like he is nowhere near racist, but he shows sign of a superiority complex, whether or not he is aware of it. He knows deep down he is not making progress in being very liberal and accepting, but he does not realize this. His only drive for being accepting of black people is that he wants to annoy his mother, not because he is truly accepting of them.
However, it is important to acknowledge that he is a good person at heart. He wants to be accepting of others and does have a generally liberal viewpoint on life, which may be a result of his time spent at college, where young people generally tend to have stronger political opinions.
Julian’s mother is also a highly developed character with multiple sides. On the surface, it appears that she is a rude, racist mother who drags her son along with her to her exercise classes. Yet, it is mentioned in the story that she sacrificed so much for young Julian. She was a widow who put him through college and allowed her teeth to go “unfilled so that his could be straightened". She is a good mother, racist or not, and she cares for her son as she may be supporting him even now when he’s out of college and looking for a job.
Overall the story was such a good learning experience, in some ways. I loved the style of writing, since it was just flowery enough to be higher level literature, but not too flowery that I didn't enjoy it.
Just a note that I've only read the title story, so this review will only cover this! This was read for my Creative Writing class my freshman year of college.
I honestly loved how O'Connor writes! Her technique is absolutely amazing, she explores the ingrained racism in the minds of non-black individuals. Julian is a young man taking his mother to a reducing class at the local YMCA, and along their journey to the class, he and his mother have a silent battle over her racist beliefs.
While this makes Julian appear like the hero and his mother the villain, there is no clear-cut good and bad in this story. Rather, the villain is the rooted racism from the time of slavery. Julian may seem like he is nowhere near racist, but he shows sign of a superiority complex, whether or not he is aware of it. He knows deep down he is not making progress in being very liberal and accepting, but he does not realize this. His only drive for being accepting of black people is that he wants to annoy his mother, not because he is truly accepting of them.
However, it is important to acknowledge that he is a good person at heart. He wants to be accepting of others and does have a generally liberal viewpoint on life, which may be a result of his time spent at college, where young people generally tend to have stronger political opinions.
Julian’s mother is also a highly developed character with multiple sides. On the surface, it appears that she is a rude, racist mother who drags her son along with her to her exercise classes. Yet, it is mentioned in the story that she sacrificed so much for young Julian. She was a widow who put him through college and allowed her teeth to go “unfilled so that his could be straightened". She is a good mother, racist or not, and she cares for her son as she may be supporting him even now when he’s out of college and looking for a job.
Overall the story was such a good learning experience, in some ways. I loved the style of writing, since it was just flowery enough to be higher level literature, but not too flowery that I didn't enjoy it.
At this point I'm pretty sure I've read all of Flannery O'Connor's fiction. For some reason the publisher of this collection also published her complete collection, so every story in this book is also in the other one. Along with additional ones in the other book. I would recommend this one over the complete collection though.
The stories in this collection are some of my personal favorites. Well I say favorites, but O'Connor's work isn't really about enjoyment. She has a definite theme to her work, and I personally think her theme is at its best in her short stories rather than her novels. It's hard to empathize with her characters because they're all kind of awful people. Not flawed characters, just generally not great people. In her novels it was difficult for me to handle the extended stays with her characters, but in her short fiction it is just about right.
If someone just wanted to try getting into Flannery O'Connor's work I would recommend this book. The short stories in it are some of her best, and the difficulty of the characterizations doesn't over stay its welcome.
The stories in this collection are some of my personal favorites. Well I say favorites, but O'Connor's work isn't really about enjoyment. She has a definite theme to her work, and I personally think her theme is at its best in her short stories rather than her novels. It's hard to empathize with her characters because they're all kind of awful people. Not flawed characters, just generally not great people. In her novels it was difficult for me to handle the extended stays with her characters, but in her short fiction it is just about right.
If someone just wanted to try getting into Flannery O'Connor's work I would recommend this book. The short stories in it are some of her best, and the difficulty of the characterizations doesn't over stay its welcome.
Nice Catholic ladies aren't supposed to demolish you like this. O'Connor was born to be a literary knife fighter. Page after page, with zero sentimentality, O'Connor rips the grotesque out of her characters and with a bareknuckle, Christian realism absolutely dares you to turn the page. Hers is a painful grace, a search for the holy in the swamps of the Southern absurd. The brilliant thing about O'Connor is by telling her stories of divine grace among the heretics and the horrors, the reader might easily miss the divine spark in the grotesque and absurd darkness.