550. The Violent Bear It Away

The Violent Bear It Away
Flannery O'Connor
1960
Around 260 pages

550! Can ya believe it? I totally can, I have been doing this longer than Sirius Black's stint in Azkaban. We celebrate with a Flannery O'Connor novel, which is not how I would have chosen to party. 

Francis Marion Tarwater was kidnapped by his great uncle and raised in a cabin in the woods. His great uncle believes that they are prophets. We've certainly had quite our share of wacky parental figures lately. Anyway, the great uncle dies, so Francis returns to his Uncle Rayber, who has long believed that Francis died. Rayber attempts to undo some of the damage that being kidnapped by a religious nutcase inflicted, but Francis rejects Rayber's secular reform as much as he resisted his great uncle's fanaticism. 

O'Connor was Catholic, and the main theme of this novel seemed to be that the well-educated modern blends faith and science, which are complementary. As somebody with religious trauma, I'm much more anti religion, certainly anti Catholic church, but of course anything in extremes is dangerous. 

Characters behaved outrageously and O'Connor explored themes that I'm not too interested in, so I thought this was kind of a bore.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Final novel published before O'Connor's death.

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