481. Wise Blood

Wise Blood
Flannery O'Connor
1952
Around 1952

I'm calling it, we are officially in a slump. Three flops in a row. I trust Papa to turn this ship around at the next entry. But I'm sure he has disappointed women before.

After suffering some war wounds, Hazel Motes returns to his family home in Tennessee to find it abandoned. Like many of us who were exposed to religion early, Motes is an atheist and intends to spread the religion of anti religion. He reaches out to a prostitute and becomes obsessed with spiritually corrupting a blind preacher's daughter.

Hazel is like the girl that claims to be over her boyfriend, but can't stop bashing him. From this novel it appears that O'Connor believes everybody has a god shaped hole in their heart. I'm clearly not a spiritual person, but that hasn't prevented me from enjoying religious authors on the List. However, I found every character in this story to be completely bananas, outside of their personal philosophies. Nobody reacted to anybody else's behavior in a believable way. This approach did give the story a biblical feel, but obviously that's not my style.

I think I was harder on Hazel because we've had three crazy protagonists in our last three entries, and I'm tired of reading about batshit men.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

PJ Harvey cited the novel as a huge inspiration for her writing on her album To Bring You My Love.

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