Wise blood.

by Flannery O'Connor

Paperback, 232 pages

English language

Published Oct. 9, 1962 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-29128-0
OCLC Number:: 3507876

(14 reviews)

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.

7 editions

Whom reviewed Wise blood. by Flannery O'Connor

I wish I could connect

3 stars

Much as I love O'Connor, I always felt like the short stories that Wise Blood was made up of were so loose and dissociative that they fall through my fingers, and reading their modified forms strung together doesn't really change that. Her portrayal of the south is as compellingly rancid and distant as ever. Everyone talks past each other, rambling in ways that only have meaning to themselves. They're all dirty, hell-bound, and know it. This is of course O'Connor's strength, but I have a harder time connecting with her earlier work which feels so directionless in comparison to the much more pointed The Violent Bear It Away.

Ultimately I think faith in any real sense is too foreign to me for any of this to really strike a chord.

Matthew M. Conroy reviewed Wise blood by Flannery O'Connor

Review of 'Wise blood' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Worth the read, but I was hoping for more. Too brief: characters (Hazel, particularly) are not developed as thoroughly as I'd have liked.

Matthew Royal reviewed Wise blood by Flannery O'Connor

Review of 'Wise blood' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

After reading this, I feel a need to read commentaries and see the movie to better understand what I read. Flannery sure knows how to create characters you dislike.