Wise Blood

I recently read Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.  I have mixed feelings about it.

The good:

O'Connor writes easy-to-read sentences that pack a punch.  She employs bizarre adjective/noun combinations, things like "rat-colored car" and "cat-faced baby" that create instant and striking visuals, what some might call Eyeball Kicks.  I like these things because they're different and weird and give the prose distinction.

The characters are creative to say the least.  No cardboard cutouts here.

O'Connor dips into the human psyche in a way few authors do.  She makes it seem real.  She arguably had a better handle on the dark side of humanity than today's popular horror authors do.

The book was riveting from beginning to end.



Okay, now the bad:

The characters are all horrible people.  They're lunatics and psychos and criminals.  There's no one for the reader to empathize with.

There's not really a plot.  It's all just "people doing things."  I know this is typical for literary fiction, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

There's not a satisfying conclusion.  Again, typical for lit-fic, but I still don't like it.



Conclusion: This is one of those books that I'm glad to have read but won't be reading again.  I'm a native southerner, but the South of this book isn't the South I know at all.  It's familiar in color but alien in texture.  Of course, I don't hang out with criminals and psychopaths, so there you go.  Either way, O'Connor's talent is obvious, and she is rightfully lauded.