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.