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A review by jadeyen
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
dark
medium-paced
4.0
Flannery O’Connor was known for her craft in telling Southern Gothic tales, and I can say this collection of tales are both Southern and Gothic. Many tales end in morbid death or despair, and in this collection piece it’s extremely eerie/uncanny the way the tales all feel like shadows of each other with common motifs of older women running farms, con men, subtle but still wedged racial alliance between classes, how folks should be in those places and times, contention with conservative viewpoints in a progressing world (technology, types of people, NYC), even some of the same/similar names and backgrounds. O’Connor does a great job of keying you into these stories richly and in a way where she just says a detail or a descriptor or an anecdote and you know that character or that situation so well. With any collection of works, some fall flat while others prevail but I’m happy to have had the sampler of the Queen of Southern Gothic.
Note: it’s hard to read this book due to all the usage of slurs, which made it a little clearer the usage in the mid century South but still was just egregious. An interesting thing to contemplate of the racism of all of this - especially when sometimes we have hero complexes and racial equality put up for irony/“wrongs” but also some of the same complexities and downfalls of those country bumpkins too.
Note: it’s hard to read this book due to all the usage of slurs, which made it a little clearer the usage in the mid century South but still was just egregious. An interesting thing to contemplate of the racism of all of this - especially when sometimes we have hero complexes and racial equality put up for irony/“wrongs” but also some of the same complexities and downfalls of those country bumpkins too.