I’m almost at a loss for words after finishing this book. I picked it up after reading Rowan William’s discussion of her work. I was unprepared for the power of her prose.

O’Connor has an uncanny ability to get inside the minds of the characters she’s created and explain their thoughts like no one else. The characters are vivid, and remain with you after you put the book down.

Another aspect of the book that made it so compelling was the complexity of the character’s motivations. In the middle of the book, I couldn’t imagine what to hope for as a resolution. In the end, I wasn’t sure whether to cheer or cringe.

If you want a novel that will stick with you, and challenge both the vacuosity of secularism and the terror of fundamentalism, this is your book.

O’Connor, Flannery. The Violent Bear it Away. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.