Everything That Rises Must Converge, Flannery OConnor
Everything That Rises Must Converge, Flannery OConnor
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Everything That Rises Must Converge

Author: Flannery O'Connor

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot, Karen White, Mark Bramhall, and Lorna Raver

Unabridged: 9 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2010

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories


Synopsis

This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment. The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. The protagonist, Julian Chestny, is hypocritically disdainful of his mother's prejudices, but his smug selfishness is replaced with childish fear when she suffers a fatal stroke after being struck by a black woman she has insulted out of oblivious ignorance rather than malice. Similarly, The Comforts of Home is about an intellectual son with an Oedipus complex. Driven by the voice of his dead father, the son accidentally kills his sentimental mother in an attempt to murder a harlot. The other stories are A View of the Woods, Parker's Back, The Enduring Chill, Greenleaf, The Lame Shall Enter First, Revelation, and Judgment Day. Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

About Flannery O'Connor

FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925–1964) was born in Savannah, Georgia. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa, but lived most of her life in the South, where she became an anomaly among post–World War II authors: a Roman Catholic woman whose stated purpose was to reveal the mystery of God’s grace in everyday life. Her work—novels, short stories, letters, and criticism—received a number of awards, including the National Book Award. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dave on June 02, 2024

"Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge"--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Flannery O’Connor died......more

Goodreads review by Greg on August 29, 2022

and she observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. A descriptive title of Flannery O'Connor's short story collection could be, This Aint Gonna End Well. This collection is like a crescendo of awfulness, brutality and despair. Physically it's sort of akin to getting kicked in t......more

Goodreads review by Paul on March 29, 2019

Three strange things about Flannery O’Connor : 1. Flannery. Kind of a pretty odd name. Some writers get them, don’t they – Edwidge, Somerset, Rudyard, Rider, Tennessee. Never heard of nobody else called no Flannery. 2. What links these celebs with our author : Selina Gomez, Lady Gaga and Ferdinand Mar......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on February 16, 2016

I have tried and tried to read Flannery O'Connor because people I trusted said I should but the darkness always got to me. "They" said her books were about redemption but I couldn't see it. Then I read her letters-A Habit of Being-and fell in love with Flannery. I began to trust her. I decided to tr......more

Goodreads review by Sasha on October 30, 2018

This lovely collection of sentimental stories is just the thing for a rainy Sunday when you want to curl up on the couch and read your blues away. Just try to read the title story, in which a beloved mother learns she has something surprising in common with a woman of color, without feeling your spi......more