Rating: 
Summary: you owe it to yourself.
Review: A dear friend suggested a few Flan stories to me, and I guess I got hooked. With this volume consumed, I can now say I have read all of the published short stories of this fantastic writer.
O' Connor's work is fantastic in the way my dictionary describes the word. "Conceived by unrestrained fancy." These stories are nearly always shocking, actually very shocking. They are powerful character driven things, and rather than describe them as "horror" stories as I see some reviewers do, I would moreso call them "grotesques."
They involve characters that are not so much "horrible" or "horrorful" as much as they are simply ludicrous, or incongruously composed or disposed. Caught up in all manner of inner bigotries, hypocrisy, fanaticism of one sort or another (most often religious). O'Connor characters often turn out to be homicidal, suicidal, brutal, obsessed, the opposite of what they appear to be, and always, if nothing else... shocking!
I am no connoisseur of the short story genre but all I know is that these stories without fail, intrigued me. Opened a door to further contemplation, and went a bit beyond what they said.
For sheer brilliance of sentence structure, visualization, suspense, I think it would be fair to say that there are few writers that have ever written as clearly as Flannery O' Connor.
When I am reading literature, characters better dang well talk good, and talk like people, not like characters. The dialogue in this collection is one of its strongest points. Impeccable down-south vernacular.
As for verisimilitude, well that is another mentionable thing here. If they are anything, these stories are bizarre, and yet they retain that quality of appearing to be true. Appearing to be possible. But the last thing that they are (hear me now, if hearing nothing else), these are NOT happily-ever-after stories.
Hell no.
They are most often direct flights into the realm of the reprehensible and least optimistic aspects (propensities) of human nature.
For those who care, my own favorite story was probably The Lame Shall Enter First.
T.y.L.i.I.
Rating:
Summary: DEAR GOD! THIS IS THE SOUTH I KNOW!
Review: Alice Walker said it best in her brief essay "South without Myths," O'Connor's characters have "nothing of the scent of magnolia about them (the tree wasn't probably even planted)." When I began to read her stories, I was terrified because I found yet ANOTHER relative in each one! (I found myself in the son in "Everything that rises must converge.") No one--NOT EVEN FAULKNER (God help me!)--hits me where I live so consistently! For ANYONE who seeks a narrative starting point from which to attempt to understand that weird mess called "the South" can do no better than to read O'Connor.
Rating:
Summary: Theology, Irony, Comedy and Tragedy, plus so much more
Review: Fans of O. Henry and other short story writers would do well to read the collected stories of Flannery O'Connor. Though the stories are as rural as O. Henry's are urban, the sense of irony and tragedy remains the same, as does the sense of comedy. O'Connor was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a superbly gifted technical writer.However, what takes O'Connor beyond the works of O. Henry is the theology behind so many of her stories. Raised in the deep South with several religious influences throughout her years, O'Connor struggled relentlessly with questions of faith, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and justification, especially in connection to social and racial prejudice. Readers will be hammered time and time again with O'Connor's understanding of what it means to be a sinner and what it means to stand under grace, and it is not for the faint of heart. Among the many stories worth mentioning are "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", "The River", "The Artificial Nigger", and "Revelation." These four stories by themselves would be worth the price of this collection - the rest simply add to the value. Any collection of 20th century fiction is incomplete without something from O'Connor, whose life was tragically cut short just as her work began to be truly appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome story teller.
Review: Flannery O'Conner is an absolutely wild and bizarre and scarry story teller. I never heard of her, until a friend gave me a copy of the book to read, and I was captivated. She has some really scary stuff in there, and she's got a great sense of social structure and society. Her timing of the book is incredible, and she knows how to build great suspence in her stories. Some might be offended the way how she descibes blacks in her book, but she gives a very realistic charming picture of Southern lives. A must read book. You will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: Flannery O'Connor is as great an American writer who ever lived. Read these stories.
Rating:
Summary: An incredible body of work
Review: Flannery O'Connor is one of the best short story writers of the 20th Century. Every story in this collection is a gem and you'll want to read them again and again.
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get better than this
Review: Flannery O'Connor is the best short story writer I have ever encountered. Some of her best stories include "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (which might be the best short story ever written), "Revelation," "A Good Man is Hard to Find," "The Enduring Chill," and "The Artificial Nigger." Some of the stories in this collection are not as good, of course, but they're all well worth reading. This is a book that everyone should have in their collection.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest American Short Story Writer
Review: Flannery O'Connor is, in my humble opinion, the greatest. This book is my favorite single work that encompasses the breadth of what short story writing is all about. "A Good Man is hard to Find" is both chilling and laugh out loud funny. Greenleaf is a great example of irony. "A View of the Woods" is a much overlooked story. Flannery O'Connor viewed a world that included religious zealots without any real faith, frustrated liberals who couldn't make the world malleable into their world view, so-called intellectuals, big-mouth simpletons, and violent outcasts. She had a great ear for southern dialogue. I know, being a southerner, this is the way it really is.
Rating:
Summary: The Twisted and the True
Review: Flannery O'Connor was perhaps the first author I read that took me completely by surprise. With an amazing sense for poetic description and a knack for deriving the most unexpected endings, O'Connor gives the general reader a fresh taste of literary irony. She seems to understand the interworkings of the human soul, giving her stories characters whom we can sympathize with. Such is the case in her famous, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in which the reader is faced with the crisis of an elderly woman when she and her family chance upon a hardened criminal and his toadies. O'Connor gives good arguments for both characters; at once justifing the position of the woman and of the murderer. She lets us understand the moral positions of both and never lets the reader get away without first facing a moral dilema. By the time one has come to the end of an O'Connor story, one must make a choice. The reader must decide for himself what path is the path of justice and which is of human nature. She eloquently illustrates the differences between the two and has the ability to frustrate, overjoy, tickle and confound readers of interests and demographics. In my view, O'Connor is the master of the short story. It is only a shame that she passed at such an early age. I would have liked to see her later works. I highly recommend any compendium of her short works. "The Artificial Nigger" and "A Circle in the Fire" are two of my particular favorite stories. Both are found in her collected works.
Rating:
Summary: A good book is hard to find
Review: Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories puts the reader in possession of a superb collection of all her short stories, including those published posthumously. Each story looks at humanity in grit and detail. With a passion for the absurd, O'Connor explores the condition of the South, sparing no character's flaw and yet making the reader sympathize and care for the people she creates. Like Faulkner, O'Connor seems to feel a sadness and passion for the South and its often crazy citizens. While many read "Good Country People" or "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" in high school, there are other stories less well-known that reward attention. "The River" and "Revelation" are two personal favorites. In "The River" looks at child neglect, baptism and death simultaneously. "Revelation," which was her last finished published work before she died ends on a hopeful note-the protagonist actually seems to have learned and changed at the end of the story- a rare thing in her work. O'Connor has been a particularly influential writer among American authors, and her theories about short stories are regularly taught in the classroom. She was a great advocate for allowing the story to be the meaning, and not candy-coating for a moral. However, her concerns are woven into the fabric of each story, and the flaws in ourselves are revealed through her characters. While O'Connor is known the best for her short stories, she also wrote two novels and some literary criticism, which are not included in this volume, but are also well worth reading.
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