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4.48 of 5 stars 4.48 · rating details · 15,201 ratings · 719 reviews

Las historias de este libro hiriente y sobrecogedor tienen como escenario los pueblos y las tierras del sur de Estados Unidos, especialmente su Georgia natal, un mundo decrépito y en ruinas cuyo secular abandono y pobreza ancestral aparecen marcados por la violencia y el odio. Pero más allá de la sordidez, los conflictos raciales, el asfixiante peso de la religión y la fru...more

Hardcover, 839 pages

Published March 30th 2006 by Lumen (first published 1971)

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Jul 22, 2012 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature, southern-literature, short-stories, by-women, reviewed, readagainable, 2012

The stories in this collection were written by an unassuming yet serious Catholic woman from Georgia who, after devoting her short life to writing, died of lupus in 1964. Besides the stories, she had written two novels and started a third; one can only speculate what other masterpieces she would have written had she lived longer.

The stories are hard-bitten, bizarre and haunting. Two that I read years ago in college have stuck with me and are just as jarring today as they were then. O'Connor's th...more The stories in this collection were written by an unassuming yet serious Catholic woman from Georgia who, after devoting her short life to writing, died of lupus in 1964. Besides the stories, she had written two novels and started a third; one can only speculate what other masterpieces she would have written had she lived longer.

The stories are hard-bitten, bizarre and haunting. Two that I read years ago in college have stuck with me and are just as jarring today as they were then. O'Connor's theme is the warpedness that resides deep in the human heart. Her protagonists are usually people who think quite highly of themselves. They are often nice people who are nice to everyone (within reasonable limits, of course) and think that the world would be a nicer place to live if only everyone were as nice as they are (“Good Country People”, “Everything that Rises Must Converge”). There are the people who dream nostalgically of a segregated society where inferiors knew their rank, respected their betters and did not try to move outside of their foreordained place in society (“The Geranium”, “Judgment Day”). Then there are the educated or artistic types who feel confined or bored by the life they lead, can't wait to escape, and sneer at all the inferior mortals around them (“Good Country People”, “The Enduring Chill”). And of course, there are those horrifying individuals who are evil, have surrendered themselves to it, and commit atrocities just because they can (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”, “The Lame Shall Enter First”).

O'Connor's wrath and sarcasm are reserved most of all for those people who are so immured in themselves that they are unaware of their own blindness. Often there is a cataclysmic moment of epiphany when they are confronted at last with their own shortcomings.

O'Connor lets these people show us their true colours either by letting us eavesdrop on their thoughts or by allowing us to listen to their conversations; she is a master of psychology and of dialogue. In her descriptions of the background scenery, nature often serves to highlight the desire of certain characters to escape their circumstances or the feeling of being trapped in an environment from which they cannot disentangle themselves without great effort.

These stories are dark, bitter, angry and often tragic. But they are a brilliant barometer of the human heart and the depravity of which it is capable when left untouched by divine grace.(less)

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Nov 11, 2012 Erik rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

An unforgettable collection of hard-hitting, caustically humorous and unrelentingly cynical stories from perhaps the strongest female voice in Southern U.S. fiction. O’Connor turns her merciless eye on religious hypocrisy, class consciousness, racism, gender roles, familial relationships, and other fertile topics, plowing them for the ugly truths they reveal about the general nature of humankind. Spending time with her characters (all of whom are depressive, delusional, misanthropic, criminal, p...more

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Jan 28, 2008 Alexa Vaughn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Every one of these stories leaves its main character in a complete sense of doom, but there's more to it than that. There's a spiritual revelation or rebirth in the midst the character's painful stupor. What I love about these endings is that as painful as that character's state of mind is at the end, they're also seeing things more clearly and truthfully than they ever have in their life--and it's undeniably beautiful, no matter how painful the situation happens to be. And boy does she know how...more

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Mar 21, 2012 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, mttbr-2012, usa

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

I can't imagine what it would have been like to live inside Mary Flannery O'Connor's head, obviously. But I am damned sure it can't have been agreeable. Her world is peopled with monsters. Damaged, limbs severed. Afflicted. Not whole. Children like evil spirits that descend on the sanctimonious. Parents that neglect, or beat their children. Bigots. The cruel and the feckless and the randomly murderous. Their names are monstrous too. Mr...more Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

I can't imagine what it would have been like to live inside Mary Flannery O'Connor's head, obviously. But I am damned sure it can't have been agreeable. Her world is peopled with monsters. Damaged, limbs severed. Afflicted. Not whole. Children like evil spirits that descend on the sanctimonious. Parents that neglect, or beat their children. Bigots. The cruel and the feckless and the randomly murderous. Their names are monstrous too. Mr Shiftlet. A girl whose given name was Joy, but who changes it to the ugliest name in any language, Hulga. Unappealing children like poor Norton Sheppard: "He had very large round ears that leaned away from his head and seemed to pull his eyes slightly too far apart."

It's not only the humans who are aberrant, diabolical, macabre. A bull that gores Mrs Greenleaf. Stairs that turn into cliff faces, unassailable in this life or the next. A digger that seems to be eating the earth and spitting it out. Mythical beasts. Trees that leap out at you. Visions. The damned and the saved. "In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah."

My strongest impression is a kind of torpor. The people are ossified, so rigidly pressed into the forms moulded by their upbringing that any change or movement is fatal to them. Those transplanted to an alien environment barely survive. A woman who is confronted with the fact that her condescending penny handed to a black child is no longer accepted does not survive the shock. The younger generation are often ineffective, weak, artistic, but unproductive, incapable, noncommittal. Walter in Why Do The Heathen Rage?:

"Her son. Her only son. His eyes and his skull and his smile belonged to the family face but underneath them was a different kind of man from any she had ever known. There was no innocence in him, no rectitude, no conviction either of sin or election. The man she saw courted good and evil impartially and saw so many sides of every question that he could not move, he could not work, he could not even make niggers work. Any evil could enter that vacuum. God knows, she thought and caught her breath, God knows what he might do!
He had not done anything. He was twenty-eight now, and so far as she could see, nothing occupied him but trivia."

This betrays a view of the world that I find hard to swallow: flexibility, a plurality of attitude as an encumbrance that renders you immoveable. Those who have not changed a thing, those who live and work in the culture they have always known, they are the ones who can move, who have some get.

Religion in Flannery O'Connor's world is not a comfort that solaces the distressed, but rather a challenge to the weak, a force that dismays, a rage that cannot be quiet. The battle trumpet blares from heaven and see how our General marches fully armed. Not gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

By the way, please note: 5 stars!! It is a cabinet of curiosities, and a wonderful one at that.

(less)

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May 08, 2008 Tyler rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Southern Lit Fans

Recommended to Tyler by: Southern Lit Fans

How would you feel if you emptied your garbage can on the floor, searching through the contents for a valuable you were sure was lost there, only to end up with muck on your hands? That's how I felt after reading a collection of the author's short stories.

With a few adjustments for technology and history, the characters depicted in story after story are mostly ordinary, modern Americans. In fact, the author's benighted rookery of dim-wits and out-and-out idiots finds its voice today thoughout th...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Allen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Before I begin, let me say this: by no means is Flannery O'Conner a bad writer. She knows her quite very well. But there is a major beef I have with her stories: the repetition. Of course, some stories a true gems ("A Good man is Hard to Find", "The River"), but after making my way through about a third of the stories, the same themes started reappearing with the same type of deffiecent characters and the same kinds of endings.

That is not to say they aren't enjoyable. I laughed along with some g...more

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Sep 29, 2007 Baiocco rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People Who Like The Ideas of Faulkner Books, But Not The Labor Of Actually Reading Them

Shelves: shortstorycollection

Although I wouldn't give this collection 5 stars reading it from cover to cover (the stories get a little repetitive) Flannery O'Connor is one of the most gifted short story writers of any time period. How can she make the human condition so haunting? Its like, each story operates on O'Connor's ability to know exactly what will make her characters happy and what will absolutely devestate them. Read "Good Country People" for a prime example, as a hope-for-love filled amputee allows a creepy stran...more

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Oct 04, 2007 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Do yourself a favor, treat yourself. If you've never read The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, read it now. If you have, read it again. Winner of the 1971 National Book Award, these are mighty strange stories of broken people in a fallen world: hermaphrodites who proclaim themselves visible, inscrutable sign of God; physically maimed men and women, tormented by spirits and passions they can't fathom; landowners, proletarian whites and Jim Crow blacks colluding in nameless, unspeakable guil...more

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Jul 05, 2012 The Chaotic Reader rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anthologies, short-stories, southern-literature, classics

O’Connor must have been a strangely interesting individual with a dark and twisted imagination. Fortunately, she also had mad skills as a writer and storyteller, so she was able to leave some of that imagination behind for the rest of us to enjoy from time to time.

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Jan 20, 2013 Cheryl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, classics-challenge, simply-delicious, socio-econ-political, southern-lit

You know the cliché saying, "the moral of the story is..." Flannery O'Connor's stories all seem illustrative of this saying--in a good way. She has a way of using disgruntled characters to showcase social issues of her time. Once you get past the slurs (in most cases the n-word for me) to really read the story and see that she uses such care to highlight realism in her somewhat mystical fiction, so that you get to see the ignorance and shortcomings of her characters, you get it. How she could ha...more You know the cliché saying, "the moral of the story is..." Flannery O'Connor's stories all seem illustrative of this saying--in a good way. She has a way of using disgruntled characters to showcase social issues of her time. Once you get past the slurs (in most cases the n-word for me) to really read the story and see that she uses such care to highlight realism in her somewhat mystical fiction, so that you get to see the ignorance and shortcomings of her characters, you get it. How she could have written with such an awareness beyond her time is amazing.

Death is also a major underlying theme in this collection. I wouldn't have understood it had I not visited the Flannery O'Connor Home and learned about her story. O'Connor died at a young age of lupus. Her father predeceased her at a young age as well (from the same disease) and while she wrote most of her stories, while she struggled with the recurrence of her illness, she knew she would be next. O'Connor was also strong-minded at a young age, I learned (like some of her younger characters, i.e. Mary Fortune). At 6 years old, she announced to the nuns at her children's church that she would be attending the grown folks church.
Her editor said this about her: "Behind her soft-spoken speech, clear-eyed gaze and shy manner, I sensed a tremendous strength. This was the rarest kind of young writer, one who was prepared to work her utmost and knew exactly what she must do with her talent."

You definitely see strength behind these words. Things that really stand out in this collection: 1) the metaphorical language (in awe), 2) the astounding dialogue (and use of dialect) 3) the way she makes you see a character's inner mind better than most writers can, 4) the mystery within each story (you end up being skeptical of each character and waiting to see what preposterousness will occur at the end).

THIS is a collection for the shelves. Beware though, it is dark.

A few of my favorites:

1. Geranium (from Flannery O'Connor's MFA thesis)
2. A Good Man is Hard To Find
3. A Late Encounter With The Enemy
4. The Life You Save May Be Your Own
5. The Displaced Person
6. The Comforts of Home
7. Why Do the Heathen Rage? (a novel-in-progresss)(less)

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Mar 28, 2013 Shaun rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2013, favorites

I've been taking some time to explore the short story both past and present, and this is by far one of the best collections I have come across. There was not one story I disliked and many were absolute gems. Her characters are often unlikeable and her endings are tragic, but her writing is superb and the lives of her characters (whose flaws are exaggerated) are the train wreck kind that you can't help but gape at, if only because you learn something deeper about yourself and/or human nature in g...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Mita rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Forse sarà stato perchè ero reduce dalla lettura, peraltro interrotta a metà, di un romanzo giapponese insopportabilmente fastidioso per la prosa scarna, povera, del tutto ignara dell'esistenza del congiuntivo (e non ho ben capito se per colpa del giapponese o della traduzione) da risultarmi assolutamente illeggibile, ma di fatto quando ho iniziato questi racconti è stato come prendere una boccata d'ossigeno, come tornare a respirare dopo una lunga apnea.
La prosa precisa, ariosa, ricca di metaf...more

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Apr 15, 2010 Melinda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit, 2010

I have just read "The Habit of Being", letters written by Flannery O'Connor (see my review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ), so I thought I would now read some of the short stories she talks about in her letters.

************
While I did not read all of the short stories in this book, I did read the majority of the ones Flannery talks at length about in her letters. "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "The River", "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", "The Artificial Nigger" (which Flannery...more

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Julie Davis I wound up stopping The Habit of Being simply due to the pressures of too many reviewing commitments but will definitely be getting back to it as I fe...more
Apr 16, 2010 03:20pm

Melinda I hope you can pick up reading her letters again. I started reading "The Habit of Being" because it was on your goodreads reading list! So I hope you...more
Apr 17, 2010 08:26am

Julie Davis Yes, it is hard to hide our own faults when she has them staring us in the face like that. :-)
Apr 17, 2010 08:35am

Feb 05, 2008 Ron Grunberg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

I wondered going through some of the stories here, might we not learn more about the southern character today from reading Ms. O'Connor's stories than we would reading the newspapers, hearing peoples' soundbites on TV--even though her stories were written half a century ago?

You see we don't see political correctness, or hardly, on the part of her characters. In the south, even after integration on public transportation, for example, if a large cross-section of fairly well-to-do white women were...more I wondered going through some of the stories here, might we not learn more about the southern character today from reading Ms. O'Connor's stories than we would reading the newspapers, hearing peoples' soundbites on TV--even though her stories were written half a century ago?

You see we don't see political correctness, or hardly, on the part of her characters. In the south, even after integration on public transportation, for example, if a large cross-section of fairly well-to-do white women were on a bus, and during that particular segment of the ride there was no other racial representation on board, Ms. O'Connor presents her busriders openly discussing the rights "of the niggers" and what one might expect of them, etc. In other words, what many decades of upbringing inculcated in someone just doesn't fly away with new legislation, with turning points in history.

And one wonders, with the Confederate flag still proudly flying down in parts of the south, with a lot of people either themselves or with their parents having lived during years of decided segregation, how removed are those gut preferences, those conditioned thoughts, from one's consciousness as one lives one's daily life?

And I must say the portrayal of "colored" farm workers or hired hands--not the middle class or up and coming business entrepreneur in the Black community--is utterly fascinating. Her portrayal has such workers remarkably obsequious, overly flattering and complementary, not uppity or filled with rage. One wonders--one suspects--there's a bit of acting going on here, that they as habit ingratiate themselves with such bromides--but it all stands in such contrast to the "angry Black man" and the "draw your line in the sand" civil rights protester many of us came to be introduced to as seemingly representative of the new and liberated Black community.

This aspect is only one dimension of Flannery's writings. She creates it all, tells beautiful stories, has a lot of odd characters, charlatans, scam artists, soul-less opportunists, innocents, all of them somehow victims, yet also people who could well alter their own fate if they would only be nudged--or nudge themselves--in that direction.

Her body of work is relatively small--but golden.(less)

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May 29, 2007 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: litfic-poetry

O'Connor's art is purgatory. It reveals human sin-- no euphemism will suit here-- in all its pettiness and ugliness. Its sinners always receive their just reward, but without the benefit of illusion.

As in Dante, purgatory is worse than hell; and as in Dante, it always points toward paradise. Everyone here is so sick that the reader must have God's own vision to see any possible healing-- for the characters, or for herself (since the American Christians and intellectuals who make up most of O'Con...more

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Mar 26, 2009 Curt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

im not sure how i hear about this woman but if you like short stories pick this up. she writes like no one ive ever read, but i dont read much so that isnt saying much. If your interested in post WWII race relations you gotta read this. its intense.

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Jun 12, 2007 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who is not easily offended

I did enjoy reading and discussing some of the short stories by Flannery O'Conner. I think Flannery would be disappointed if she didn't offend me a little...she did especially in the cold-blood murder that ended "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." I read that story before bed...oops! I had to read another book to feel better before I could sleep. All of Flannery O'Conner's stories center on themes revolving around race, and getting beneath the surface of people. These stories made for good discussion...more

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Jun 03, 2009 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: a-good-man-is-hard-to-find

Flannery O'Connor was a genius; her multi-layered stories demand multiple readings and span the range from satirically hysterical to violently dark. A native Georgian, all of O'Connor's stories are set in the rural South and have a religious under-current to them, yet what O'Connor has to say about faith may surprise you … My all-time favourite author.

Though all the stories are astounding, I’d most highly recommend the following:

A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Good...more

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Nov 04, 2008 Lance rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I use this as a text book on the short story. "Good Country People" is arguably the best short story in the language--and that includes "Young Goodman Brown" (Hawthorne), "Bartleby the Scrivener" (Melville), and "The Real Thing." (James). "Revelation", "Greenleaf", Parker's Back", "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"--these are all anthologized now. I can think of no other writer in this century--even Faulkner and Joyce--who have had so many of their short stories be...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Riley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Flannery O'Connor wrote on the decaying South with both compassion and condemnation, humor and tragedy. These stories are largely on the clash of generations, and at times got a little repetitious in their themes for me: the older generation, obsessed with maintaining their standing in a no-longer-relevant order, versus the younger generation, over-educated, scornful and lost.

An example, from "The Enduring Chill," of what I'm trying to get at:

"While he was still in New York, he had written a let...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Cleo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, owned-books, classics

Flannery O'Connor is such an amazing writer. Her stories create such a feeling in you even though they're only between 10-40 pages long. I read Everything That Rises Must Converge, and I just had to read the rest of her stories. And really, they're so amazing. There's an element of the macabre to them. You get this deep chilling certainty as you read that something bad is going to happen in the end, which it usually does. And they're kind of scary that way, but it just shows how talented O'Conno...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

"The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee." and other words from Flannery O'Connor-

It's difficult for me to talk about Flannery O'Connor without using some really extensive metaphor to make a point (-which is basically exactly what she was so good at). I love irony, sarcasm and satire equally, and I really, really love them when applied to religion, particularly from the perspective of an insider. The whole mantra of, "you can't talk about my family, bu...more "The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee." and other words from Flannery O'Connor-

It's difficult for me to talk about Flannery O'Connor without using some really extensive metaphor to make a point (-which is basically exactly what she was so good at). I love irony, sarcasm and satire equally, and I really, really love them when applied to religion, particularly from the perspective of an insider. The whole mantra of, "you can't talk about my family, but I can" applies here: O'Connor is a cradle-Catholic, and she remained devoted to the Catholic faith throughout her life. It's one thing to stand on the outside of something you don't believe in and throw stones. It's quite another to intelligently and accurately critique something you do believe in, using artful, literary commentary no less. Her writing has often been criticized for being too dark, but she said that all her stories involved the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it. O'Connor said the character's inability to accept grace is what make the story hard, hopeless and brutal.
Flannery, you just slay me-

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."

"The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”
(August 9, 1955)"

“There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.”

"The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."(less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Daniel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Grace changes us, and change is painful."

O'Connor, a delicate Southern Catholic who lived a third of her life ravaged by lupus, was certainly acquainted with pain. Her stories reveal this much. Many readers and reviewers may wonder if she doesn't take a bit of artistic license with her definition of "grace," though. Considering her religious ideologies (which aren't hard to figure out, even after reading just one of these deliciously dark little tales), her unsubtle brutality isn't so unexpecte...more "Grace changes us, and change is painful."

O'Connor, a delicate Southern Catholic who lived a third of her life ravaged by lupus, was certainly acquainted with pain. Her stories reveal this much. Many readers and reviewers may wonder if she doesn't take a bit of artistic license with her definition of "grace," though. Considering her religious ideologies (which aren't hard to figure out, even after reading just one of these deliciously dark little tales), her unsubtle brutality isn't so unexpected. Look God directly in the face, the Bible says, and it completely and utterly destroys you.

It's safe to say that even if her characters don't always get an unobstructed view of their Creator, they all at least catch a glimpse. O'Connor is not shy about her beliefs, and in fact, her unswerving social sensibilities are part of what make her writing so delectable. Read closely, because every single detail is important and potent. And just like the Bible she adheres to so fervently, the endings to her stories are forecasted unapologetically by every word that comes before them.

This in no way ruins the power of those conclusions. Read a hundred interviews with a hundred writers, and I guarantee you that many of them will mention, as inspiration, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." Sit down for twenty minutes with the hilarious and heart-breaking "River," and ask yourself if your foreknowledge didn't rob the final lines of their shuddering ferocity. Visit "A Displaced Person," meet "Enoch and the Gorilla," stay for awhile with "Greenleaf," and take a good long look at "A View of the Woods." You may find yourself wondering if there is any compassion and hope in O'Connor's world, but you'll never doubt that it is full of meaning, full of necessity, and full of heavenly fire.

There's a legitimate beef some may have with this collection. "O'Connor has written an amazing story," one of my friends once said. "I just don't know why she chose to write it thirty-one times." It's fair to say that O'Connor doesn't stray much from her predictably gruesome formula. But while her themes never change much (purification through fire, self-knowledge gained via self-destruction, and the immolations brought on by racism and doubt), her telling of them is so fine and so stark, the details themselves are what really showcase her writing's true brilliance and beauty.

This collection is arranged in chronological order, and it is part of the treat to see her ideas age as she does. Her final story, the aptly titled "Judgement Day" is a revision of her first story, "The Geranium." The differences between the two show most openly where O'Connor hides the hope and faith and love that many feel is missing from all the works between. O'Connor, like the God in which she believed, seems too ready to expose her characters to an amazing amount of pain and degredation. But if you look close enough, if you read every sentence carefully, you'll see that she makes necessary every sacrifice, every drop of blood, every harsh, scalding ray of sun. In an era now where authors tend to shock for shock's sake, O'Connor stands out as a timeless reminder that as senseless and vicious as life's stories may sometimes seem, there is still the chance that behind it all lies a deeper, knowable truth. That truth may come at some great costs, but, O'Connor seems to say, it is better to buy with your flesh something lasting and real, than to sell your soul for even a whole world of lies.(less)

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Dec 26, 2011 Margie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O'Connor had a gift for creating characters with flaws, quirks, and biases instantly recognizable from real life, despite the fact that she exaggerated them to magnify their humorous absurdities. Her best-loved stories are unified by an uncanny balance of cruelty toward and compassion for her characters. Horrible, senseless, unexpected things often happen to these people, but we can't help being amused because, for the most part, we feel they deserve their fates. O'Connor is especially savage in...more

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Sep 04, 2011 Michelle Butler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some readers complain of a repetition of themes in O'Connor, but I think you'll find that repetition in the body of work of many writers as they try to puzzle out and understand what worries them. O'Connor, a devout Catholic in the deeply Protestant Georgia, a highly educated single woman with a chronic and ultimately fatal illness, posessor of a fierce mind, was an outsider in more ways than I can count. Her gender and time (publishing in the 1950s and early 1960s) only emphasize the revolution...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Engl 328 added it · review of another edition

Introduction

Flannery O’Connor was a very accomplished writer during her day. She was a very determined Catholic writer who believed in herself. She was strongly opinionated and went for what she wanted in life. After her father’s death, she branched out and graduated high school and college where she then published essays, letters, short stories, and novels. She won many awards for her works and accomplished all of her goals, except her last novel. The death of her illness kept her from finishi...more

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Jun 02, 2010 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O'Connor is literary "shock and awe" in the best sense of the metaphor. She pitted herself against what she called "pious trash." She is also one of the best anti-dotes to trashy-trash nihilism that I know of.

She writes so convincingly about what biographer Ralph Wood calls "the Christ-haunted South." The characters are almost tangible to the imagination. As I read I became convinced that I knew people like this whether it was true or not. This happened especially while reading "The Displaced P...more

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May 20, 2010 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When you discover something special it tends to stick with you for a long time. This is what happened when I first read Flannery O'Connor. In college I was first acquainted with O'Connor and her short story "Good Country People". My professor provided a brief bio of her life from her battle with lupus to her comic drawings in her early career. The story instantly connected with me. It was grotesque, funny, tragic, and it haunted me after I read it. The ambiguity is something I at first hated, bu...more

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Apr 17, 2010 Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1900-1969, prose

Rural literature can be incredible, like any sort of literature can. Guy Vanderhaeghe is stunning, Faulkner's amazing, and there's generally a lot of good literature from the American South and from rural Canada, etc. I love Westerns, I like a lot of Southern Gothic, etc. etc.

The Canadian stuff is a lot more appealing to me. In Canada, it seems like even the most urban of city residents has a sort of connection to more rural areas of Canada. Our relationship to the Canadian outdoors is a crucia...more

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Sep 23, 2009 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

The All-Seeing Gaze of Mrs. Freeman: Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People from “The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor”

I was smug when I first met the gaze of Mrs. Freeman, she with her “forward expression” that was “steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck.” (271)

Obviously, I thought, O’Connor has presented me with a mule of a character--a prideful, simple woman who “could never be brought to admit herself wrong on any point.” The story begins with this gaze and ends with thi...more

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About Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. O'Connor's writing often reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

Her The Complete Stories received the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction. In a 2009 online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, the collection was named the best work to have won the...more

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Books by Flannery O'Connor

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters (Library of America #39)

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Quotes from Cuentos completos

“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.” — 142 people liked it

“He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.'

'What you got on it?' the girl said.

'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.'

'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.” — 96 people liked it

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