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Aug 29, 2011

Paquita Maria rated it:

I have been stewing on this book all night...it was 1)terrific in every and 2)completely rotten in every way and 3)scary, scary, terrifying scary without trying too hard to be. O'Connor has said that she searches in the darkest, most hopeless little worlds for "god's grace" (or more specifically, "god's presence", be it dark or light). Seeing as I have no fear of the wrath of an angry god, why did this book affect me so deeply, leaving me with a stunned expression staring a More...

11 comments like (19 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2011

K.D. rated it:

So far, the best short story collection that I've read. Flannery O'Connor's prose can make you sing. However, the songs are predominantly dark, tragic and sad. The most appropriate image that I can think of is that scene in The Wizard of Oz when the tornado is ravaging the Kansas farm of Dorothy's parents and then picture her singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" while the bicycle-riding wicked witch is smiling at her.

Quite an appropriate picture because Flannery O'Connor w More...

2 comments like (18 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2008

matt rated it:

This stuff is twisted, sparse, clipped, dark, doomy, funny, dramatic, Southern, angry, sexy, super Catholic, death-haunted, maniacial, bizarre, possibly racist, apparently desperate, fatalistic, existential, dreary, ugly, fetid, frenzied, morbid, lax, stern, prepossessing, unforgiving, unrelenting, anti-everything, aged, "retro", haunting, parabolic, anecdotal, moral, redemptive, sublime, reasoned, feverish, dreamlike, unsparing, sparse, I said that one already, seductive, craftsmanlik More...

4 comments like (28 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2011

Joseph rated it:

The last book I read was also a collection of short stories, but that is where the comparison stops. Each and every one of the stories in A Good Man is Hard to Find is a gem, masterfully polished and displayed by Ms. O'Connor.

This is, I think, the third or fourth time I've read through this book, and I still can't decide what she thinks of the human experiment. On the one hand, she paints her characters with such exquisite detail, putting forth their quirks and foibles in such a wa More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Shan rated it:

There are no heroes in this book. Flannery O' Connor's characters (or shall I say grotesques) are gruesomely funny, frustrating, and generally horrible people whose chances at redemption are short-lived, have come too late, or are ignored completely.

"She would have been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

I envision O' Connor with a colossal all-seeing eye floating above her head, witness an More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2007

Rochelle rated it:

Oh good lord. Someone said she made the south seem even creepier than it already was and i agree with a shudder. And my experience is that you can never really shake off these stories. She can create a character in five words that you will recognize instantly way, way down in your cerebellum--or maybe somewhere in your gut--and it will live there inside you forever. I think she is the unmatched master of the short story form. And don't get me wrong, you will laugh at times while reading. But the More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Seth rated it:

o'connor runs a funny path in her stories. the themes are a sort of crypto-southern gothic with spartan sentence structure and diction. but that is what gives them a piercing sense, as well: with everything so barren, a two-sentence description of the sun setting over barren branches of trees in front of the house in the middle of nowhere can explode into meaning that might elsewhere take pages to build up. this may sound like someone overintellectualizing lazy writing, but read it yourself and More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 12, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

I don't aspire to write fiction. Knowing one's limitations is a gift. But oh, if I could only write short stories like Flannery. She shows you scenes so real it feels like voyeurism, and some so unsettling that you'll be glad it's fiction. These characters do not work and play well with others!

The longest story, "The Displaced Person," is a masterpiece about hypocrisy and prejudice. The imagery is perfect. In fact, the imagery in all of her stories is amazing.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 31, 2011

Jamie rated it:

First things first, O’Connor did exactly what she intended to do here. It’s not a failure by any stretch (if, at times, close-cropped and uneven). Whatever she’s doing, cruel and unusual, she’s good at it. But dear god, it just happens to be the exact kind of thing that revolts something deep down in my gut. I’m usually all on board with the creepy, crazy, what-have-you, but the difference here is that nobody is even alive before they’re dead.

“Bleak,” “oppressive,” “macabre,” all of More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Joan Paulette rated it:

This book haunts me. Her images and characters are so vivid, that I can recall them six years later as if I read this book yesterday says something of the power of masterfully crafted language.

Flannery O'Connor was devout Catholic, which made her a bit of an ousider in the Evangelical Protestant South. If I had to summarize her worldview is that she believes in God, but not so much in people.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 30, 2011

Kirby rated it:

By golly, I cannot get enough of Southern Gothic literature-- I simply CANNOT!

Flannery O'Connor is fantastic. She has one of the most distinctive tones of any writer I've ever encountered, and she weaves these fascinating, tense, poignant and somewhat disturbing stories with a grace that is pretty freaking unparalleled. This collection is full of tales about seemingly simple rural folk, with a powerful sprinkle of ironic turns and shockingly abrupt twists. And although the book wa More...

2 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Snickers rated it:

Bad stuff first:
These stories are not at all what I expected. I'm adding this book to my "wtf reads" shelf, because that's the feeling I get when I'm reading these: WTF? That being said, I generally enjoy a little WTF quality in my novels - provided I can make sense of it at some point. I enjoy the confusion, provided I don't remain confused (if that makes sense). Stories like "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" just completely blew me out of the water and into anoth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 27, 2010

Jana rated it:

One would say, Flannery is a nice Southern lady who wrote this little book with this cute name: 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'. She was probably lonely spinster, spent her life reading romances, swinging on her porch, drinking lemonade and making up lovely stories. A-a.

Big mistake from the beginning: I still have not read a book where USA South hasn't been portrayed as the devil's pit in a human form. She is sensational. I’ve never read a book like this. Her stories are completely dar More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 22, 2011

Evan rated it:

I wish I had gotten the addition with the "other stories" that I am seeing should have come with this from the other editions. I was not really looking for critical essays to read on it, but was more interested in O'Connor's content.

However, since this is the edition that I found in the library...

As with Wise Blood, the text to me very much demonstrates O'Connor's disillusionment with religion. The grandma continually tries to convince the Misfit to pray, and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Fred rated it:

it's hard to know what to compare flannery o'connor's short stories to. the only thing that pops to mind and seems apt is the bible. these stories are biblical for a lot reasons -- for one, the prose, which is so masterfully written that it seems like the work of some unimpeachable deity. and also, the boldness of the stories. there are these massive, brutal, unavoidable moments of revelation that you never think to question. it all just seems so bizarre and yet inevitable. i dunno, i'm not doin More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2008

M.L. rated it:

AGM is one of those books that I had once read (parts of) out of obligation (English class), but now can read with intentionality. I guess I can only say that my 15-year-old self was an illiterate little shit. Short stories so often hinge on just one sentence or just one paragraph, that it's no surprise if my pulp-fiction, page-turning pimple-self couldn't the point. Call me older and more patient, now.

FoC's stories are like the moments before a train wreck, recorded in slow motio More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 30, 2011

Sergio rated it:

Just amazing. Some of the best short fiction I've ever read. Dark, darkly humorous at times, grim, and deeply moving stories of moral choices - often bad ones - under dire circumstances. O'Connor draws out the subtle, often entirely internal despair of her characters in a wsy that makes them feel palpable and real, which makes the stories quite scary at times. Her language is violent and shocking, but beautifully economical, and her resolutions are never easy or clean.

I get tha More...

0 comments like

Oct 13, 2011

Bruce rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 04, 2011

Melanie added it

I finally read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." This book and I first crossed paths my second year of college. I enrolled in a creative writing class that had assigned this book, but then dropped the class after our first meeting when the instructor told us we couldn't write any stories where the main character dies. Apparently I didn't like that rule. I sold the book back to the bookstore and went on my merry little way. A few months later I read about or someone told More...

0 comments like

Mar 23, 2011

Mariel rated it:

I promise that one day soon I'm going to back up that five star rating with a real review. I swear on all of the reviews on goodreads. I swear especially on Kristi's review, and also on Seth's review (he doesn't know me but I'm that serious about this that I will swear on reviews like there is no tomorrow). I swear on the lives of all the people I've ever known from Florida and Georgia. And on Flannery because she's another cool Flannery.

I've got stars in my eyes.

And sta More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Apr 16, 2010

Matthias rated it:

I enjoyed these stories but only found a couple of them compelling enough that I thought about them while I was not reading them. They are “The Partridge Festival” and “Parker's Back.” “Good Country People” is also interesting, but like I say, I wasn't dying to get back to the book and read it. In all fairness to Flannery, though, I tried to read each story in one sitting, so there may have been more than the above mentioned if I had not.

A classmate in my Gotham City Writers class More...

0 comments like

Mar 11, 2010

Stuart rated it:

I didn't really read this edition; I read it from my Collected Works book.

I liked this a great deal better than Wise Blood, and since it was a series of several short stories I feel I'm much more acquainted with O'Connor now.

Next comes The Violent Bear It Away, and I'm looking forward to it, though I'll probably read a couple other books before I get back to it.

I read somewhere that O'Connor read a lot of Edgar A Poe, and I can see some similarities. Her stor More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2009

Laura added it

The book I read is called A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor. It is written in third-person and is based on the Grandmother's point of view. O'Connor keeps the story very entertaining but also makes you think.

This book is about what a "good man" truly means. The story starts with a family on their way from Tennessee to Florida on vacation. The grandmother plays the part of a very annoying woman who just gets on everybody's nerves. On the way to Florida, she com More...

0 comments like

May 31, 2009

Aaron rated it:

Some books inevitably become intertwined with context in which they were read. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is linked in my mind with an afternoon of listening to “The Last Waltz.” While the artistic goals of the two artists are ships in the night, there is some context of connection between The Band at its best and O’Connor; both look to grapple with that “old weird America,” in the aftermath of the vulgar/high-modern Eisenhower era. However, as The Band looked to inject Romantic emotional ana More...

0 comments like

Jul 15, 2009

Stefani rated it:

Flannery O'Connor has such a gift for writing short stories, I take back what I said about her after reading Wise Blood. You know how some stories are so permeant to your senses, that you can almost smell the perfume the character is wearing or visualize the scene as if you were watching a movie? That's kind of what this was like, except I felt like these stories were being told to me by a wise older Southern relative, while we were sitting on porch swings, sipping mint tea or straight up whis More...

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Feb 26, 2009

Carly rated it:

André made me read this, and it took me forever to do it, but he was right. It's amazing. She writes about ugly, ugly things in such a way that they are completely beautiful. And usually heartbreaking. Or sometimes they just give you this detached sad kind of feeling. But it's always beautiful. My favorite? A Temple of the Holy Ghost. My second favorite? It's a tie between The Artificial Nigger and The Displaced Person.

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 27, 2011

Kurt rated it:

At some point I have to give something 5 stars. I know I've given 5 stars to a graphic novel, but picture books have their own scale in my mind. This collection comes as close as anything I've read in recent memory. O'Connor is perfect. I can't recall a single turn of phrase or events that steered me wrong. Her handling of secret lives versus what people put forward as their public self, and how all this public bullshit adds up to effect the private is good, great stuff.

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 04, 2010

Jenn rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Nov 28, 2008

Jane rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

May 17, 2010

hannah rated it:

beautifully written and morally convoluted in a way that makes most of them just deeply, deeply disturbing - though none more so than the book's eponymous story. i read it on my way home one day and ended up walking off a curb and into a tree. it's shocking and terrifying and the story has no redeeming characters but o'connor's prose is so gripping and she writes with such conviction that it's impossible to detach yourself from it. they're all like that, though o'connor's southern catholic moral More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)