Flannery O'Connor has a great writing style. Easy to read prose that fits in with her subject matter and period. She is, however, incredibly grim. The moral of her stories always seem to be that the self-righteous gets theirs in the end.

I've read this before, in my twenties, and I've just re-read the title story. Flannery O'Connor's very good and the characters in the story are recognisable even though they come from a long distant past: the mother who is a real old-school southern racist, born and raised, and her son who thinks of himself as better than her but his rejection of her racism is driven entirely by spite.
Also takes a prize for one of the best names of a short story ever.

Excellent stories from a talented beacon of the field.

Very dark, but the stories all manage to be singularly interesting while never straying from the theme.

Rather depressing... incredibly depressing, actually. Great collection of short stories, but be prepared to want to hate the world after reading it.

Quite possibly the best collection of short stories the Western world has ever produced. And I'm not just saying that because O'Connor is a fellow Southerner...

If you want to see what sin, selfishness, and snobbery can do to a soul, this is the collection for you. Of course, if O'Connor ended there, this wouldn't be a five-star book. She breaks the will of her most hardbitten characters with irresistable grace, often in the form of a violent assault or emotional collapse, so that the most grotesque figures of this world are in the end pointed toward the hope of redemption.

Christ-haunted indeed.

Still good, but felt more overtly religious than A Good Man is Hard to Find, and the stories got fairly repetitive towards the end.

Perfect for when you need to feel depressed and Southern, and you need it fast. It's cathartic if, you know, you get catharsis from miserable people being even more miserable. Patent proof that bad things happen to good and bad people, and that God and ordinary folks can be some real mean sumbitches sometimes.

But O'Connor does a bang-up job making it feel real. She's a gorgeous and laser-focused writer, and brings your racist-ass neighbor to life. O'Connor has a peculiar Catholic affinity for the brow-beaten S.O.B.s. And she takes no glee in knocking the shit out of casual racists and dirtbags -- almost every story ends with them receiving a destructive, awful, and violating truth.

Sometimes it felt a little too much, and there's a few stories that are noticeably lightweights ("The Comforts of Home," while a buzzkill, feels downright cozy compared to the horrific "A View of the Woods"). And O'Connor sure likes to take the Southern scenic route while beating around the bush. But I certainly can't say I didn't kinda enjoy it.


...

I originally rated this 4, but half a year later, I have done something I very rarely do and placed O'Connor's work where it belonged all along at 5 stars. Because even for its shortcomings, it lingers so desperately in the back of my mind. Those warmed over languished lines, "Mother, I am dying!", eat at me more than the Bible.