This extensive collection brings together all the stories of Flannery O'Connor. Those who follow literature are familiar with her name and possibly her story. She was born and raised in Georgia; her life spanning from the late 1920's to the mid 1960-s. She got her MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop where she made connections such as Robert Penn Warren and Andrew Lytle, who was the editor of the Sewanee Review, an important showcase for literature. After she was diagnosed with the lupus that killed her father, she moved back to Georgia where she lived and worked until her death.
O'Connor is known for her short stories and readers will be familiar with the titles of many of these such as A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge and The Lame Shall Enter First. The central issue of O'Connor's life was her Catholic faith and the stories are based in that although they are not overtly religious. Instead, they are a reflection of the way humanity was perceived by O'Connor and then twisted to an extreme to make a point. The characters are often grotesque and rarely does anything positive or even stable happen to them. Instead, the stories tend to end on a negative note where hopes are dashed and everything is doomed. They focus on the worst in human nature and racism and evil are a major focus.
O'Connor is considered an important writer and I'm glad to have finally gotten around to reading her work. However, I was surprised to find that I didn't care for them much if at all. I'm a very optimistic person and reading such negative work that constantly focuses on racial epitaphs and assuming a common viewpoint that other races are less than the ones in power gets overwhelming quickly. Every story ends on a negative note and this collection took me many weeks to read as I had to have spacing between the stories. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
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