Book Review: A Good Man is Hard to Find & Other Stories

A little over a year ago, I didn’t have any idea who Flannery O’Connor was, despite having a love for literature and short stories. After hearing about her on a podcast, her name stuck with me. But I never went as far as looking for something she wrote.

Until January.

And boy, was I in for it.

Flannery O’Connor isn’t a peachy keen sort of short-story writer, but she writes about things that matter. She challenges her readers to really think about their faith, and what or who they really trust in.

Her stories remind me of parables; not because of the content, but because they are short stories that are meant to make you stop and consider what you really think. They challenge us to look at social norms and traditions.

In this collection of short stories called, A Good Man is Hard to Find & Other Stories, Flannery O’Connor shocks readers with her unique view of life. These stories were filled with Christian symbolism in order to confront the reader with their need for salvation. She did this through the tragedy of human error and tendency to point to self and the terrible habit of thinking temporally rather than eternally.

Her characters were flawed–disgustingly so in some cases. But the lessons they taught the reader were incredibly powerful.

One of the most difficult that I had to wrestle with was called, “The River.”

In this short story, a young boy is being cared for by a woman who loves the Lord. She is under the impression the young boy’s mother is sick and ailing and that is why his father requested that she care for him on that day.

She had plans to attend a revival meeting near the river, so she took the boy with her, where the preacher takes him, baptizes him in the river, and tell him he now “counts.” The boy realized that this isn’t a joke, which starkly contrasts his home life where everything is a joke.

In fact, his mother isn’t even sick, but hungover, something that happens often. When his sitter takes him home, his parents are having another party. He wakes up the next morning to find his parents still sleeping off the night before, and decides to return to the river. He is determined to baptize himself "to keep on going . . . until he found the Kingdom of Christ in the river.”

He jumps into the river and dies.

Clearly this is a very difficult concept for us to wrestle with as humans. This young boy’s life is terrible–his parents don’t seem to care about him or even themselves. At the first hearing of the gospel, and being baptized, he hears the preacher tell him he counts, and realizes that the place where he does is in heaven. He longs for that feeling again. We, as humans, think it unimaginable that a better ending for the boy would be death rather than life.

But Flannery O’Connor challenges the reader to consider that if the boy put his faith in Christ there at the river, then he is in a much better place than if he were anywhere on earth.

She is essentially asking the question: If we are so upset by the story in a book, do we really know Jesus and trust him with where we’re going to go when we go?

Like I said, this story was one that I had to wrestle with.

This collection of stories all had similar themes within them, really making me think about my life and where I am putting my trust. It was something I wasn’t expecting, but really enjoyed.

These are darker than something I would ever normally pick, but they are something I now value deeply and will likely read again and again.

As an classic American author, Flannery O’Connor is highly underrated–otherwise, she would be much more well known. I encourage you to take a chance on her and read her stories.

Let me know if you do!

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