A review by jobly
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

5.0

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.