Flannery O'Connor


The writing style of Flannery O'Connor awakens the reader with its felicity. The author's imagination takes over from there and with Flannery the reader is in for a wild ride.
I have the collection, Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor , in my library. Wise Blood, her first novel and the first work in this collection, is a gothic take on the world of southern itinerant preachers. Hazel Motes' Church without Christ is a bleakly humorous approach to the whole god/man situation and the psychology portrayal of Motes is worth studying through a rereading of this short work. I cannot remember another work that challenges the modernists view and raises questions in so many different ways. The sad lives of Leonora and Hazel come together in a haunting way following episodes in which Hazel, again and again is treated almost sadistically both by others and himself. The collections of short fiction underscore the ability of O'Connor to surprise and challenge the reader. I find myself returning to her work from time to time just to make sure that my previous readings were not a dream.