Play Book Tag discussion

This was a difficult book to follow. I listened to the audio, which helped somewhat since the story just kept on unfolding without much help from me. If I had read the print version I may not have been able to wade through.

I had to resort to some internet research to figure out what it was I just read. This "novel" is made up of several short stories altered to fit into a whole. After learning this, the odd sense that there are multiple main characters was more clear.

I borrowed some quotes from an Encyclopedia Britanica article about the author and this novel to help me capture the feeling of this book. The main character Hazel Motes travels to a town "populated by a grotesque cast of itinerant loners, false prophets, and displaced persons on the make." And from there the story "becomes increasingly violent and phantasmagorical".

I've read some of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, so I was expecting a some very dark twists and turns. But this may top the list as the strangest book I've ever read. There's a theft of a midget-mummy (and deciding this mummy is the new Jesus), fights with a man in a gorilla suit, rivals run over in the street, two cases of intentional blinding with lime (one not successful, the other very successful). And all of the women depicted in this novel are scheming, manipulative, out for money and just plain mean.

Yikes. I've had A Good Man is Hard to Find on my tbr for ages, without knowing much about this author. Now I see why her books have so many gothic tags. I guess if I'm ever going to read it, now is the time. There are many books written about the author, including a recent one written by an author I admire.

It's funny that a woman would write so many negative female characters. I'm working with a company right now that has some unusual communication issues. A few of the women sound like they'd fit right into this book (the manipulation part anyway). It makes me feel disloyal to my gender to even say so.

Nancy - I read A Good Man is Hard to Find last year, and it's significantly better than Wise Blood (in my opinion anyway).

But having said that, her stories are all pretty dark.

i just finished .... yeah.... what you said