In this week’s book section, Josh Potter reviews Ann Napolitano’s A Good Hard Look, which is a novel about Flannery O’Connor’s last days. It begins with an explanation of what makes O’Connor’s fiction so memorable:
In almost every Flannery O’Connor story, someone (or everyone) dies in absurd and traumatic ways. In “Greenleaf,” Mrs. May gets gored in the heart by a bull. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” an entire family—including children—is shot to death by an escaped convict. And it’s widely agreed that, in light of O’Connor’s slightly dark and twisted approach to Catholicism and her 13-year battle with lupus, which destroyed her body from the inside out, violence, to O’Connor, is an avenue toward grace…
You should read the rest of the piece here. Napolitano reads tonight at Elliott Bay Book Company at 7 pm. The reading is free.