Wise Blood

Summary: "[T]his first novel...introduces its author as a writer of power. There is in Flannery O'Connor a fierceness of literary gesture, an angriness of observation, a facility for catching, as an animal eye in a wilderness, cunningly and at one sharp glance, the shape and detail and animal intention of enemy and foe. The world of 'Wise Blood' is one of clashing in a wilderness....Miss O'Connor's style is tight to choking a...nd as direct and uncompounded as the order to a firing squad to shoot a man against a wall....One cannot take this book lightly or lightly turn away from it, because it is inflicted upon one in the same way its people take their lives--like an indefensible blow delivered in the dark." [read more]