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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
There has been a long while since i havent understood a book. I am old enough to make sense of one thing or another, make links, see patterns. I desperately wish someone could explain this book to me. Someone would tell me what every event meant, is it a metaphor, is it painful, is it even real? Past the halfway point, I was baffled by every next thing that happened. And god did I enjoy that.
adventurous
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I wanted to like this since O'Connor is so highly regarded, but I just didn't.
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Every time I finish anything by Flannery, it's always, "Well, that was weird." Which makes me wonder about the nature of weirdness - if something is predictable, can it also be weird? I guess she's predictably weird. Still like her. Don't always get her. I'm okay with that.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
A quite brilliant novel which, like all the greatest works of art, opens itself up to a wealth of fascinating and even contradictory interpretations. Clearly the preferred reading is that this is a discussion of the emptiness of a world in which we have lost sight of the true worth of Christ's teachings and the value of Christian redemption. Certainly this fits neatly with O'Connor's devout Catholicism and her many statements about the ideas underlying the narrative. That said, it can also be read as a far more cynical text, which exposes Christianity as utterly lost and devoid of meaning. As someone who is pretty suspicious of religion and spirituality I favour the second reading, though I'm sure the author would be at odds with me. That said, O'Connor was far from prescriptive in terms of how she saw her readers' relationship with the meaning of her work - she wrote in one letter...
"When you start describing the significance of a symbol like the tunnel, which recurs in the book, you immediately begin to limit it."
Clearly she wanted her readers to see understand her work in their own way.
However you read it, this is a stunning piece of work. The writing is beautiful and as well as being very profound in its concerns the novel also manages to be extremely funny - something which most reviews here fail to recognise. It's rarely that I laugh out loud when reading, but I did repeatedly when reading this.
"When you start describing the significance of a symbol like the tunnel, which recurs in the book, you immediately begin to limit it."
Clearly she wanted her readers to see understand her work in their own way.
However you read it, this is a stunning piece of work. The writing is beautiful and as well as being very profound in its concerns the novel also manages to be extremely funny - something which most reviews here fail to recognise. It's rarely that I laugh out loud when reading, but I did repeatedly when reading this.
Stark. Bleak. The main character is really really intense, in a particularly bad way. This is not a book to read for light entertainment; instead it is a book to read to make you think about the seriousness of things, and what we can know about what other people are thinking. This is a book about religion, about truth, and about will. The main character -- Hazel -- sees things for a very different point of view (metaphorically, and then physically) and his nickname -- Haze -- has a double play on that (one: is what he seeing a haze of reality, misguiding him like the will-o-wisps. two: what we see of his experience is, at best, a hazy shadow of what he experiences, as his landlord shows when she can't help but try to understand him). This book is full of that kind of depth (if one can be full of depth). This is a book that makes me question the whole "judging others" of our judicial system (for instance, the case of the 15-year-old girl who killed a younger girl so she'd know what killing felt like: she has to be in a whole different reality than the one I understand... one like Hazel is walking through).
Not a pretty book. Not a happy book. But a book worth thinking about.
Not a pretty book. Not a happy book. But a book worth thinking about.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Violence, Suicide attempt, Murder
Moderate: Grief