Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Wise Blood

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 9,793 ratings · 881 reviews

Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is a story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an iro...more

Paperback, 236 pages

Published March 6th 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1949)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Best Southern Literature

54th out of 599 books — 1,403 voters

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Best Southern Books

46th out of 335 books — 445 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Dec 07, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

Hey, kids! It's time for a game of Choose Your Own Adventure: Southern Gothic Literary Analysis Edition. Please select from the following options:

1. You are a Christian bordering on Calvinist who wants metaphorical reassurance that you are a part of the spiritual elect, and you want a real martyr of a sinner to guide you through the steps to grace: Hazel Motes returns from the war to find that he has no one, nothing, and nowhere to turn. In defiance, he rejects the lord (human nature, a necessar...more Hey, kids! It's time for a game of Choose Your Own Adventure: Southern Gothic Literary Analysis Edition. Please select from the following options:

1. You are a Christian bordering on Calvinist who wants metaphorical reassurance that you are a part of the spiritual elect, and you want a real martyr of a sinner to guide you through the steps to grace: Hazel Motes returns from the war to find that he has no one, nothing, and nowhere to turn. In defiance, he rejects the lord (human nature, a necessary step) and starts his own church in an attempt to persuade people that sin is natural, Jesus is a fictitious concept, and that attempting to achieve grace and redemption through the conscious rejection of sin is, basically, a fool's errand. Of course, God has already selected Motes as a member of his posse, so he eventually cannot help but crawl toward the most savage acts of masochism and self-deprivation in order to achieve a thumbs-up from his creator. Thank God for mental illness!

2. You are an atheist who loves to explore the damaging effects that religion can have on society, particularly underprivileged, under-educated, and otherwise vulnerable individuals: Hazel Motes returns from the war to find that he has no one, nothing, and nowhere to turn. In defiance, he rejects "the lord" (finally) and starts his own church in an attempt to explain to other brainwashed people that sin is natural, "Jesus" is a fictitious concept, and that attempting to achieve "grace" and "redemption" through the rejection of "sin" is, in fact, a fool's errand. Of course, Motes has been programmed from an early age to believe that god has already selected him as a member of his posse, so he eventually (foolishly, depressingly) cannot help but crawl toward the most savage acts of masochism and self-deprivation in order to achieve a thumbs-up from his supposed creator. Thank god for ignorance! Sheesus.

3. You are uncertain about religion, but love to read books with a creepy religious undertone, despicable characters, rotting things, decaying road-signs, illness, degradation, spiritual defeat, handicaps, boils, suffering, old-fashion poverty-stricken whorishness and a general David-Finchery lens coloring and dinginess to everything within a nightmare-carnival setting: Hazel Motes has a shit life. He lives in some oddly eloquent alter-ego of a Rob Zombie movie. He turns to God(?) and it works out(?) Thank gawd for Flannery O’Connor!

*Side note: This book is a ball-crusher, and not for the faint of heart. I mean, no matter how you spin it, it is BLEAK. Don't read it while experimenting with different anti-depression medications or anything. You’ve been warned.

*Side side note: Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor should have made babies. Lots of babies.

*Side side side note: This is an extremely stripped down description of what’s going on in this book, and in that right it is a bit unsure of itself (the review…certainly not the book). I fully acknowledge that I am not doing ole’ Flanny flan justice, and for that I’m sorry. I’m on my break and out of time. More later(?)
(less)

78 likes · like · see review

Jul 02, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: heathens

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: The Man Himself

Shelves: own, dark, gave-me-chills, read-in-2012, you-should-read-this, female-authors, gr-group-coreads

I have to say, there’s nothing more attractive than a man in a sharp suit.

Hello lovely:

description

However, Hazel Motes, I think you should fire your tailor. (Maybe you should take some of that money you keep throwing in the trash and buy a new suit. Just sayin’).

description

All joking aside, I’d like to take a moment to thank Ms. O’Connor for restoring my faith in female authors. Such a shame she died so young; one can only wonder what stories she left untold.

Wise Blood tells the tale of young Hazel Motes, who returns...more

28 likes · like · see review

Feb 24, 2013 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: april-2012, best-reads

A story of dark and strange staggering beauty.

Joy and pain, suffering and redemption.
It's has dark cynical humour with characters of outrageous quality.
There is plenty of work behind the structure of the story.
She has included many issues around her during her time and locality, they are of beauty, child neglect and abuse, racism and police brutality.
Watch out for these things as you read this along as you might not pick up what she trying to convey.
His large hat and clothing seem to give everyo...more

24 likes · like · see review

May 08, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jeffrey by: Southern Literary Trail

After reading just a few pages of this book I kept thinking to myself Hazel Motes is doomed.

First of all he is the lead character in a Flannery O'Connor novel. The only thing that could be worst is if he were the lead character in a Jim Thompson novel. The poor bastard hasn't got a chance. For one thing he's got the wrong look to him. "His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression on his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and stuck together again, or lik...more

40 likes · like · see review

Jan 10, 2008 Dusty Myers rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like Flannery O'Connor, but I don't love her. This is a problem, I know, because if one reads half as obsessively as I do the words of other writers about how goes about writing fiction, one comes across Flannery's name and maxims at just about every turn. She is, without question, a genius, goes the belief. And maybe she is. She knows her way around a simile: "The little boys' faces were like pans set on either side to catch the grins that overflowed from her." She's also great at understated...more I like Flannery O'Connor, but I don't love her. This is a problem, I know, because if one reads half as obsessively as I do the words of other writers about how goes about writing fiction, one comes across Flannery's name and maxims at just about every turn. She is, without question, a genius, goes the belief. And maybe she is. She knows her way around a simile: "The little boys' faces were like pans set on either side to catch the grins that overflowed from her." She's also great at understated humor, most of it unquotable because it's so grounded in context, but here's one: "He was smiling. He looked like a friendly hound dog with light mange."

But whenever I read O'Connor all I can see behind her humor is meanness. O'Connor is not a writer who loves her characters. Granted, I've read maybe three stories and one of her two novels, but in each of them we're not meant to like anybody the way other writers invite us to. We don't like Hulga. We don't like Manley Pointer. We don't really like the Misfit and we sure as hell don't like the old woman he shoots dead. Or, rather, we can't like them, because each time we start to sympathize, O'Connor's got an impeccably worded and timed detail that makes us stand back and laugh at this person's foolishness.

She doesn't seem to do this in any po-mo argument way; that is, to comment on the futility of liking verbal constructs on the page as if they were actual people. No, she does it seemingly because there's too much morality at stake for us to actually get comfortable with anyone. And so, here, we laugh at Hazel Motes, who finds himself without family or friends in a small southern city, trying to shake off his preacher heritage. We laugh at Enoch Emery. We laugh at the "blind" preacher Hawks and we laugh at his daughter.

All in the name of what, exactly? I'm still trying to figure this out. I think what makes O'Connor such a celebrated writer is the force of her clear sentences and the careful control she has over the scope of her stories. There is never any excess. Also her takes on religion and faith are complex and uncommon in modern literature, which is great if complex, uncommon takes on faith and religion are what you're looking for in a book. Right now, I'm not looking for this. Books in which religion gets as much mention as feudal Belgium are what I think I want.(less)

11 likes · like · see review

Oct 25, 2007 Molly Moran rated it 1 of 5 stars

Huh. I don't know what to say about this book at all. I tried reading some of the reviews to see if they helped clarify anything for me, but nobody said much of anything. Lots of people gave it 4 or 5 stars but then just said that it was weird and anti-religion. That doesn't inherently make something good. I'm still unsure what the point of this book was: what's the critique, what's driving it, what, if anything, am I to take away from it?

I've not read O'Connor before, and I don't think I'll be...more

9 likes · like · see review

Jul 06, 2007 Kat Mc rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone with a brain?

So, my friend Justin has this group of nerd writings and readings gathered on a site called [www.oxyfication.net] and they are rejuv-ing their book club and chose this as June's read. I just started, on page five now, love my friend Flannery, so I bet I'll love it. Let you know.

Ok, so this wasn't what I could handle at such a busy time in my life. In many ways I liked it, in many I didn't. You really need to read this one when you have the time and are feeling angsty about the after-life (and li...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 18, 2013 Luke rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is rich, elemental stuff. Blind preachers. Charlatans. Shrunken corpses. Blood, sin, death, sex, redemption. It was unsettling. It was weird. Hazel Motes is a truly freaky character and the perfect fulcrum to build this eerie, disturbing novel around. Even his eyes which seem to be looking at something else when they’re looking at you, that’s sort of the feeling Wise Blood gives you – you’re never really sure what it’s really doing, even when it seems to be offering something simple and str...more This is rich, elemental stuff. Blind preachers. Charlatans. Shrunken corpses. Blood, sin, death, sex, redemption. It was unsettling. It was weird. Hazel Motes is a truly freaky character and the perfect fulcrum to build this eerie, disturbing novel around. Even his eyes which seem to be looking at something else when they’re looking at you, that’s sort of the feeling Wise Blood gives you – you’re never really sure what it’s really doing, even when it seems to be offering something simple and straight, like a scene in a diner, a caryard or a train.

Hazel burns with a Christ-like zeal, but not for Christ. He’s the most fervid preacher of all despite himself (“I ain’t no goddman preacher”) while the ‘real’ preachers are charlatans (through weakness or worse). He wants to worship the vacuum where Christ was. He’s more anti-theist than atheist, more heretic than unbeliever. His crusade is to break the shackles of the lying Jesus, whose image fell somehow in the war he’s returned from – but how or why is left mysterious. We know he has been wounded somewhere, but again, no more than that. Hazel’s irony is that the more he rebels, the more his rebellion seems to ensnare him in the very Christ he’s trying to escape. The Jesus-shaped hole looms larger and larger until it engulfs him. He’s a walking, tortured paradox: a rebel against God who just can’t shake God’s shadow that flits through his soul and looms in silhouette over everything he tries to do, or destroy. He dies a failed preacher, by the hands of the authorities, unjustly, attended by a woman in a twisted Easter Sunday who doesn’t think he is dead cf. the original of course, where the women didn’t think Jesus was alive. He echoes the archetype of the wandering saint, the mystic, the innocent – but it’s a rich, ironic inversion, so deep that Hazel is a kind of reverse Christ. He tries to show sin doesn’t exist by plunging into it, but it doesn’t work, and the blood he sheds isn’t wise and doesn’t redeem, and he ends mortifying himself in a boarding house like a hermit in a cave.

Enoch is close rival for head freak in this fascinating freakshow. Somehow you believe it when he steals the shrunken man or takes off with the gorilla suit (commandeered via a broken umbrella and possibly murder). He seems to be in thrall of preliminary psychosis, the state of “delusional atmosphere”, which then coalesces into behaviour in the realm of the definitively unhinged (burglary of primate artefacts / costumes, as above). O'Connor is taking a risk here - whenever a writer goes for something too out there, the veil of literature may fall and what’s left is raw words that are most definitely fiction and not real life. That’s the tightrope walked – too realistic and it’s boring, too fantastic and it’s outed as just made up. But there is something here that lets the story dance along this divide - maybe it’s the uncanny atmosphere, or the hints of depth, but whatever the trick it smooths the transition into the frankly bizarre so deftly that we shrug and read on. Even a man in a gorilla suit in a cage, in the rain, pretending to be a real gorilla as children walk up to shake his hand, that’s arresting and unsettling, and I’m not sure why.

I read somewhere that irony is “the song of a bird who has learned to love its cage”, but that's not the irony we find in Wise Blood. We're used to a decaf blend of irony which defends against actually ever saying anything or believing anything or even really being anything, hipster irony, basically. But here the irony hits a much deeper seam, the irony of true paradox as found in the drama of the Greeks or Milton or the Bible. Even still, sometimes, particularly late, the irony can slide towards a kind of grotesque comedy. There is innocent young girl, Sabbath, that Hazel wants to seduce and corrupt (violate the Sabbath, if you will) who is in fact not innocent at all, and trying to do the same number on him. So his Sabbath is not what he thinks it is, which is just what he’s been preaching to everyone about the real Sabbath, and all the rest. His church is a Church WITHOUT Christ but of all the preachers he's the one to actually blind himself and mortify himself (the way the real preachers can't or won't), and die. And so Hazel is the central irony. His name too: haze, mote – as in remove the mote from one’s eye – even the echoes of Azarel and Moses. He’s eccentric and bizarre and pretty much full-throttle bonkers but crafted so well that he still rings true. Much like the book.

(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 15, 2011 Emily added it

Shelves: read-in-2011

I'm glad I picked up Wise Blood relatively soon after perusing A Good Man is Hard to Find , because this novel clarified some things in my mind about Flannery O'Connor's theology. I'm now certain that I disagree with just about every aspect of her worldview, to the point where I am actually repulsed by her assumptions and arguments. But I also find her thought processes fascinating, and her writing tight and, often, darkly funny. Moreover, it's probably a good exercise, every so often, to stretc...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 05, 2010 Ed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Like some of Faulkner and Capote, Flannery O'Connor writes in a literary style that's called Southern Gothic. You can read Wise Blood several ways for different things. It's a bleak, irreverent, bizarre, violent, funny, and dark sort of book that also considers the big themes in life, religion, and philosophy. Much of it, I believe, was written with O'Connor's tongue firmly planted in her cheek. Hazel Motes is a 22-year-old war vet who returns to Tenneessee to resolve some "issues", and he's cer...more

4 likes · like · see review

May 22, 2012 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Un mucchio di balordi cristiani veramente balordi.
Il finale e qualche altro episodio l'hanno salvato. Per vent'anni ho letto del genio e dei capolavori di Flannery, ma mi ero dimenticato che è morta giovane, il lupus cattivus se l'è portata via. Quindi santa subito. La cosa migliore del libro è la ragazza con coniglio in copertina. Da lei mi farei convertire seduta stante. Anche dal coniglio. Non necessariamente in quest'ordine.

Ripensando a questa storia gli alzo il voto a quattro. Mi è rimasta...more

2 likes · like · see review

May 16, 2013 John Molina rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a unique book. The story centers around Hazel Motes and his disillusionment with religion and the human race in general. Hazel is a broken character who grew up wanting to be a priest, but after experiences in a war, Hazel becomes bitter towards anyone who he views as "clean." Hazel, for the majority of the novel, tries convincing others of the fallacies of religion while also struggling with his innate sense of spirituality. The interactions between Hazel, and the only character who ca...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 26, 2010 Jimmy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

For a novel written by a devout Catholic, that is basically a straight-forward allegory about faith, the overall message is somewhat ambiguous. Of course, any novel that is written by someone of a particular religious persuasion is bound to suffer from a subsequent hermeneutical conflict. Is Hazel Moates a religious martyr, one who's initial anti-religious, nihilism eventually transforms into painful redemption? Or is he just a foolish zealot; someone who passes on every worldly opportunity for...more For a novel written by a devout Catholic, that is basically a straight-forward allegory about faith, the overall message is somewhat ambiguous. Of course, any novel that is written by someone of a particular religious persuasion is bound to suffer from a subsequent hermeneutical conflict. Is Hazel Moates a religious martyr, one who's initial anti-religious, nihilism eventually transforms into painful redemption? Or is he just a foolish zealot; someone who passes on every worldly opportunity for companionship and secular love? These are the two conflicting questions that abound after reading O'Connor's book, and watching John Huston's fairly literal cinematic adaptation of it.

Moates' has a good enough reason to lash out at Jesus. After all, he did suffer the youthful misfortune of having a tent preacher as a grandfather. Not to mention being surrounded by a community which was undoubtedly as foolish as his remaining family. After spending spending (a briefly mentioned) stint in the war, Hazel returns to his hometown. Finding nothing there but a few dusty memories he starts off on a journey to preach the gospel of his church of "Christ without Christ". He travels to Taulkninham, dressed looking pretty much like a preacher, a response that he gets from a majority of the town's population. While there, he runs into a mentally and emotionally challenged young boy named Enoch Emory, becomes obsessed with a blind street preacher, Asa Hawks and his daughter, Sabbath Lilly, and has what little audience he gathers, taken away by a traveling evangelist huckster by the name of Hoover Shoates. Of course, none of these hinderances seem to stop him from "getting where he has to be".

His conviction in the early part of the book, despite his apparent nihilism, is clearly driven by an ironic preoccupation with religious salvation. It's certainly a strange variety of it though. The only detail that really solidifies this reading is his fixation with Asa Hawks. He doesn't believe that the man has been saved by Jesus. His primary interest lies in uncovering Hawks's fraudulent claims. It's possible that Hazel feels close to this man in the sense that they are both essentially frauds; Hawks preaches in order to swindle people out of money, and Hazel does so to exhibit to the world, the fact that he does not need the help of Jesus Christ. There is, however, a deeper dynamic to this because O'Connor seems to want to point out the fact that the greedy opportunism of Hawks and Shoates, is on the same moral level with Hazel's denial. In a way, every character in Wise Blood is an opportunist, whether it be financial, emotional, religious, or sexual. There really is not one decent character wanting to connect with another one on a genuine level.

O'Connor clearly foreshadows Hazel's eventual downfall throughout the entire novel. Apparently, this was one of her trademark storytelling choices. He is a driven character, certainly not lacking any sort of will to power or personal confidence. Yet his desire to remove himself from the need for any sort of religious help, makes his quest completely delusional. Money isn't really questioned so much until the end of the story. O'Connor offers a vague explanation about government assistance as a compensation for war wounds. So he can get by if he wants, but this story is all about one man's destructive journey. The pragmatic realities of the world ceased to make any difference to him ages ago.

So the transformation occurs during an epiphany that he has when a police officer kicks his car off of an embankment, completely destroying it, thus stopping him from his quest to preach his atheistic gospel. After this, he stubbornly sacrifices himself to Jesus in order to become clean before his death. In a way, he returns to his penitent youth, eager to endure as much pain as possible, just so Jesus will forgive him. In this, he succeeds.

The focus on the other characters becomes sort of irrelevant toward the end. Hazel's landlady is the last one to make an attempt to reach out to him. She offers love as something possibly more important that some insane notion of religious redemption. At this point, Hazel has completely left the real world, totally insistent upon completing his journey. Still, she is motivated by a fear of loneliness and old age. It's a rather bleak offering. Enoch Emory is an interesting character, but he is hardly given enough time in this short novel to develop into anyone worth contemplating too heavily. If anything, he provides comic relief, but that fades into what is an already comedic story. It's Hazel's character that really stands as the significant metaphor here.

So then, does he turn out to find this true path? Is the stubborn and foolish waste of life that is displayed here, totally redeemed by the moral of how worthwhile religious salvation is? It's hard to believe, even in light of O'Connor's religious beliefs, that she considers this character ennobled. Another possible reading here (and let's all hope for the sake of reason that this was the intention) is that this type of martyrdom is completely ridiculous, and that O'Connor's notion of it contains at least a bit more dignity than the example set forth by Hazel Moates' character. Or she doesn't, hence the complicated nature of religious allegory.

(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 20, 2008 Joel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love me some Flannery O'Connor short stories, but this took a while for me to get into. Her characters are so skewed, so not-quite-right, that it's tough to relate to them in any way. Enoch Emory is crazy, Hazel Motes is obsessed and fanatical, and Sabbath Hawks is nasty and twisted in her own right.

But that's kind of the point. O'Connor's grotesque characters are both inexorably tied to and alienated from their Christianity--in fact, from any moral center at all. That disconnect makes them s...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 22, 2008 Ron Grunberg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Hazel Motes thinks what he thinks and no one much can influence him one way or another; he hardly hears anyone else. He seems to move on his own inclinations. He arrives in a small southern town and starts preaching his "Church without Christ". He becomes obsessed with an apparently blind preacher and his daughter, and at the same time another young man, having lived in the town and working at the local zoo but who has not had any friends for the two months he's been there, becomes obsessed with...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 02, 2007 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

i loved it. dark, funny...o'connor immerses the reader in foreboding otherworldliness. gave me a similar feeling as did reading 'white noise,' anticipation of something monumental, something catastrophic, pushing me forward before finally being resolved by the mundaneness of the real world.

o'connor beautifully contrasts an ominous feeling of dread with an invocation of objective reality: the narration is presented, more or less, entirely objectively, with the reader filling in gaps with his or...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 13, 2008 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

A curious little narrative told with wonderfully understated style. This quintessentially Southern Gothic tale is populated by quietly quirky characters that seem to be charging through some epic trajectory but ultimately bound to the mundane realities of their warped worlds.

Propelled by their oddly manifested religious and philosophical appetites and, moreover, their nagging need for validation, the unpleasant but not entirely unempathetic Hazel Motes and Enoch Emery attempt to transcend their...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 23, 2008 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars

I suppose Flannery O'Connor must be considered a Christian writer, as she was a Catholic and Christian themes permeate her books, but her imagination was on fire and she knew how to get those flames into her words and that's really all that matters.

Wise Blood is like an upside-down inside-out book about salvation, where professed atheism is faith, blindness is seeing, and rottenness is goodness, and it's all spiced up with tersely vivid bizarre characterizations and situations in an enveloping...more

9 likes · like · see review

Nov 26, 2007 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

After reading a couple of chapters of this book, I turned to my husband and asked, "Is this book about mental illness?" as every character in this book just seemed to be batshit INSANE. But as it turns out, that's the beauty of Wise Blood. You'll never meet characters in any other novel as infuriating and unique as the lot you meet in this book. They're all nuts, but you'll understand - and maybe even like - them, because O'Conner sure does. I appreciated her sharp observations and dark sense of...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 18, 2009 Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

"This shiffer-robe belongs to Hazel Motes. Do not steal it or you will be hunted down and killed."

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 22, 2009 Ed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Good and evil are absolute in O'Connor's world, never more so than in "Wise Blood". People are generally evil, stupid or both. They act irrationally--or it would seem from the outside--but it all makes sense in the fevered minds of Hazel Motes, Enoch Emery, Asa Hawks and Sabbath Lily. This is one of the darkest (and funniest) dark comedies immaginable, a guided tour of hell from the perspective of vengeful Old Testament prophet, a place where nothing is whole and everything and everyone is broke...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 02, 2008 Debbie Reschke Schug rated it 5 of 5 stars

I haven't found any modern (and, really, past) authors who write like Flannery O'Connor. She tells such odd stories, like I'm remembering some weird thing that happened to me in the distant past and trying to make sense out of it by getting into other people's brains.
Her stories are so painfully sad, but soulful in a way that makes it more painful to read even if every single character in the book is an awful human being.
I'm sure I don't even understand the depths of what she was trying to com...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 28, 2013 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

What fun this book was! Would I recommend it to most people? No. It's disconnected narrative, strange characters and focus on the grotesque does not make this read fun or beachy (who doesn't love a beach read? Not Flannery O'Connor...) - but, if you love to see someone playing with narrative, playing with how characters can function (none of these characters are likeable, relatable or realistic) as tools in a story, or want to spend hours pondering what the hell any of it means, then this is the...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 18, 2013 Jeanne Thornton rated it 4 of 5 stars

One can hardly dislike a book that ends with a guy wearing an ape outfit, or a book that features set pieces like Hazel buying the car. But Flannery O'Connor is just so completely MEAN. I believe she wrote the book when she was twenty-four, and it shows: effective suicide as "only morally pure act," the only choice with integrity, is the kind of thing it's hard to believe in after a certain point in your life. Good argument for why religion is sinister. I wonder exactly what F O'C's view of reli...more

like · see review

Jan 13, 2013 Kaitlin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-novel-class

Short and sweet:
I wanted to love this story, so so much, and there were parts that I absolutely did -- no one paints a character quite like O'Connor, but there was something that kept pulling me out of the story and I kept drifting off. I have experienced this before with reading early-mid-20th century literature, which is the colloquial style language comes of awkward and dated to me, and I have a hard time really digging into the writing. There is sort of a dissonance that prevents the story f...more

like · see review

Jan 10, 2013 Meri rated it 3 of 5 stars

A couple years ago, a friend of mind noticed I was on my third consecutive Erskine Caldwell novel; He suggested I should read Flannery O'Connor. It took me long enough but now I see why the suggestion made sense, O'Connor and Caldwell both write about a subhuman race deep in the south. Critics generally label their characters as "grotesques" but I beg to differ.
It is kind of in vogue to retroactively diagnosis people as autistic. So, considering the core symptoms of autism are anti-social and...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 26, 2012 Matt Bianco rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This is my first Flannery O'Connor novel. It was also the first she wrote. First, I am ashamed that it took me 35 years to read one of her novels. I'm sorry. Second, I am ashamed to say that it might take me 35 years to understand it.

The story was interesting and easy to follow. It's about a guy who hates Christianity, especially as he sees Christ from a southern, hell-fire-and-brimstone perspective. Insofar as that was the message, I think I got it alright. I think there must be more to it than...more

like · see review

Dec 20, 2012 Lloyd Fassett rated it 5 of 5 stars

This story really explained to me why I have to read her stories more than once. These are some screwed up characters and the story means something, but I don't know what. It's the 40's when crime was easy and anyone could preach and lie and be dumb. She goes out of her way to show how dumb these characters which made me think of Death of A Salesman being so purposely obvious that both works were post-modern. The main character mostly seemed like a violent Bartelby The Scriver (Herman Melville)....more

like · see review

Dec 01, 2012 Casey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, americana, religion

Hazel Motes is trying to find redemption. Although raised a Christian, and still held by its rules and moralizing, he wants to find another way to be saved. Initially, he becomes interested in a blind preacher and his daughter, hoping to become a follower. However, he decides to start preaching on his own, without any clear ideas other than everything that he has ever been taught about religion is a lie. He befriends Enoch, who thinks he has wise blood that shows him the true way, and has a miss...more Hazel Motes is trying to find redemption. Although raised a Christian, and still held by its rules and moralizing, he wants to find another way to be saved. Initially, he becomes interested in a blind preacher and his daughter, hoping to become a follower. However, he decides to start preaching on his own, without any clear ideas other than everything that he has ever been taught about religion is a lie. He befriends Enoch, who thinks he has wise blood that shows him the true way, and has a mission that lies in parallel with Hazel's motives. At the end, Hazel discovers that redemption can only be personal, and it cannot be gained by gathering a flock of followers, and Enoch discovers that he isn't as special as he believed.

While reading this book, I was instantly reminded of Donald Ray Pollock, who recently published The Devil All the Time. Sure enough, after finishing Wise Blood, I did a quick internet search, and there was Flannery O'Connor listed as one of Pollock's major influences. In knowing that, it does sour the creativity of Pollock, as his writing is extremely similar. But then it brings up the question, who does it better? The original or the follower? Honestly, I preferred Pollcok because he takes the same themes as O'Connor, and makes them richer and darker. If I haven't have had read The Devil All the Time, I would have enjoyed Wise Blood a lot more.

The last chapter was the brightest part of the book. I felt disappointed by the book's ending. I thought that Hazel's change would be the impetus for a glorious, second part, in which he wanders around and meets other strange characters and becomes involved in mysterious events.

I don't think the book's description does justice to what actually happens. Hazel isn't preaching most of the book, although it is implied in the second half that he spends a lot of his time doing so. Another main character, Enoch, isn't even described on the book jacket description, and I thought he and the new Jesus plotline was the best in the book.
(less)

like · see review

Nov 02, 2012 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book about 20 years ago. I don't remember much about it, but I do remember the feelings associated with that reading. I was about halfway through it, so on my lunch break, I drove to the mall, sat in my car in the parking lot and read. Until that point, I liked it but I wasn't married to it. Then, something about the language, the theme, the whatever in that last half---possessed me to finish it there in that weary parking lot. I called work and was an hour late getting back. I told...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Boxall's 1001 Bo...: December {2012} Discussion -- WISE BLOOD by Flannery O'Connor	16	247	Mar 03, 2013 07:05am
Haze's death	16	80	Dec 07, 2012 11:57pm
On the Southern L...: The Grotesque in "Wise Blood"	9	34	Oct 09, 2012 11:17am
On the Southern L...: Wise Blood - First Impressions (mark your spoilers)	47	42	Sep 15, 2012 09:45pm
The Bookhouse Boys: Wise Blood discussion	26	18	Jun 01, 2012 07:01am

combine
Other Editions (33)

More editions...

Genres

Classics

128 users

Literature

62 users

Gothic > Southern Gothic

56 users

Novels

47 users

American > Southern

40 users

Religion

32 users

Literature > American

29 users

Book Club

27 users

Gothic

22 users

Literary Fiction

18 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

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

More about Flannery O'Connor...

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)

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Wise Blood

11 trivia questions
1 quiz

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Wise Blood

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.” — 65 people liked it

“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.” — 55 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Wise Blood
avg rating	preview: Wise Blood Goodreads rating: 3.92 (9793 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48467.Wise_Blood?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311996926l/48467.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48467.Wise_Blood?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor[/url]

Wise Blood

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website