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Good Country People and Other Stories: selected and introduced by Lauren Groff
The American South. A turbulent world, fraught with the Civil Rights struggle and toxic religious tensions. Against the backdrop of mountainous sunsets and backwater shacks, deserted highways and small-town gas stations, people forge their own lives.
We encounter murderers, escaped convicts, dysfunctional families, conmen, fanatics, farmhands, Bible salesmen, troubled children, gangsters, hypocrites, misfits and outcasts. These are characters marked by grotesque flaws, darkly humorous and oddly beautiful. Their complex humanity is revealed in apocalyptic moments of Gothic horror, absurdity and violence that transform all who witness them - and us, too, as we realise that nothing in our moral universe is black and white.
Flannery O'Connor is the supreme tragicomic chronicler of these bodies and souls, her classic stories infused with the dazzling force of prophecy as one of the century's most visionary writers.
We encounter murderers, escaped convicts, dysfunctional families, conmen, fanatics, farmhands, Bible salesmen, troubled children, gangsters, hypocrites, misfits and outcasts. These are characters marked by grotesque flaws, darkly humorous and oddly beautiful. Their complex humanity is revealed in apocalyptic moments of Gothic horror, absurdity and violence that transform all who witness them - and us, too, as we realise that nothing in our moral universe is black and white.
Flannery O'Connor is the supreme tragicomic chronicler of these bodies and souls, her classic stories infused with the dazzling force of prophecy as one of the century's most visionary writers.
- GenresClassics
299 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 7, 2025
10 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Flannery O'Connor
214 books5,314 followersCritics note novels
Wise Blood
(1952) and
The Violent Bear It Away
(1960) and short stories, collected in such works as
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
(1955), of American writer Mary Flannery O'Connor for their explorations of religious faith and a spare literary style.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 7, 2025
3.5 - a good man is hard to find lowkey my fave short story of the year!!
January 8, 2026
A year ago I saw a movie called Wildcat. which introduced me to the incredible life of Flannery O Connor and after that I have been fascinated by her writing. I read Wise Blood last year and picked up this short story collection or my bookclub and I loved it
A Good Man is Hard to Find is a masterpiece of a short story. So is The River. and The Life You Save May Be Your Own. The portrayal of American south in the 1950s. the humor of a woman dying of Lupus trapped in her own body. Her writing is exquisite. Yes it is a lot of racial slurs and they haven't aged well but The Displaced Person is so funny.
I want to read the rest of Flannery's stories after this. Truly an exceptional writer that left the world to soon
A Good Man is Hard to Find is a masterpiece of a short story. So is The River. and The Life You Save May Be Your Own. The portrayal of American south in the 1950s. the humor of a woman dying of Lupus trapped in her own body. Her writing is exquisite. Yes it is a lot of racial slurs and they haven't aged well but The Displaced Person is so funny.
I want to read the rest of Flannery's stories after this. Truly an exceptional writer that left the world to soon
December 17, 2025
Good Country People and Other Stories is a collection of 12 short stories, set in the South of the U.S and covering a wide, varied range of people, from Bible Salesmen to Gangsters and from troubled children to murderers, set against just as varied backdrops from the famous mountainous regions of the South to small towns and secluded shacks.
They're funny, they're dark, they're uplifting and deeply human. There's violence, there's horror but these also beauty and hope within these pages.
All in all, an incredibly entertaining, emotive collection, with my favourites being "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" , "A Circle in the Fire" and "Revelation".
Be sure to pick your copy up if you're looking for something a little different.
5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
They're funny, they're dark, they're uplifting and deeply human. There's violence, there's horror but these also beauty and hope within these pages.
All in all, an incredibly entertaining, emotive collection, with my favourites being "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" , "A Circle in the Fire" and "Revelation".
Be sure to pick your copy up if you're looking for something a little different.
5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
January 10, 2026
The first three were very good then the rest just weren’t good at all. It was a real slog to get through and put me into a bit of a reading slump.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews