Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"By far the most thoroughly worked out and cogently argued analysis of the origin and embodiment of O'Connor's meanings." -American Literature "This book is a must for any reader who would fully realize the art of Flannery O'Connor, who used violence and grotesquery as a means to 'make new a reality that the mind and eyes of man are accustomed to gloss over and ignore." -Minneapolis Tribune "For critics who have been quartering the field for years, Sister Kathleen's study is a view halloo. To domesticate the metaphor, it is a landmark in O'Connor criticism. Though the scholars' quest may range as far and deep as Kafka criticism in the fifties, it will have to return to this book ... This is not a comfortable book to read. One gets the blood of the narratives on one's hands. But it shows Flannery's emblematic intelligence forcing contemporary violence and Biblical archetypes into a matrix; and creating comedy too, though she is a comic artist less of the school of Goya and Daumier than of Rouault. Her brush is dipped in pain." -The New York Times Book Review "Here is a beautifully written and penetrating study of Flannery O'Connor's writings, with particular focus on the profoundly religious and Catholic influences and meanings that informed virtually every line of her work... an extremely welcome addition to the growing list of O'Connor studies." -Publishers Weekly "In an excellent foreword, the novelist Caroline Gordon calls this book the 'best guide any serious student of Miss O'Connor's work can lay hold of,' and the increasing number of O'Connor's readers should find it indispensable." -Library Journal
