Ratings15
Average rating4.4
Winner of the National Book Award The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.
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Below are summaries of O'Connor's short stories, organized alphabetically by title:
Is Flannery O'Connor the greatest short story writer of our time ? Perhaps. Anyway, I love her. What a great read this collection is, including her letters. How does she manage to be so dark and so funn ? Love her stories about her peacocks. I wonder what the Mark Twain re-writers will do when they discover O'Connor's use of the N-word ?
I really liked “Greenleaf” and “You Can't be any Poorer than Dead,” and of course “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a classic. But overall, Flannery wasn't quite what I expected. I don't have a problem with her prose; it's stark and blunt, almost like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. But most of them have no real ending; if I didn't know better, I'd almost assume that some of them were a typing error and cut off the last few pages.
I got a lot out of Faulkner because I took a class focusing on him; I probably would have had a similar experience of Flannery, but it's a little tough reading solo.
Update: got some help in seeing her vision from Bishop Barron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAK1oybyJBc), and I'm all in.