I have almost nothing to say about Wise Blood, though I enjoyed it immensely. Fresh off 1Q84, I wanted something a bit shorter and not on the Kindle. I was limited to my own library since it was Black Friday, and I wasn’t in the mood to change out of my pajamas. After reading Everything that Rises Must Converge and finally deciding that I love Flannery O’Connor, I picked up Wise Blood at the Centenary book sale, and it sat on my shelf for a few months.
Then, on Black Friday, I sat down and read the whole thing.
Which is very rare for me. I’m pretty sure that the only time I’ve read a whole novel in one sitting was Cormac McCarthy‘s Child of God, one afternoon at Barnes and Noble. Though I really enjoyed it, that novel is a blur since I didn’t take time to digest it in part.
Same goes for Wise Blood, sadly. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. Luckily, Palmer and I were both off of work that day, and we weren’t going anywhere until late afternoon. He caught up on TV shows while I holed myself up in the library for Serious Reading Time. Palmer even came in for a while and napped with the kitties. It was a good day.
Except, of course, that I remember almost nothing about this novel. O’Connor likes to explore religion, and that’s a big part of what Wise Blood is about. It felt like an extended short story. It’s also O’Connor’s first novel (of which I think there are only two), and it whet my appetite to read the rest of her work. I’ll have to reread this one in the near future, in bits and pieces, so maybe I can talk about the plot a little.
