Wise Blood

By: Flannery O’Connor

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of 20th-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate 15-year-old daughter.

In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds The Church of God Without Christ but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with “wise blood,” who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel’s existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.

©1990 The Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor (P)2010 Blackstone Audio

Critic reviews

“No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation.” ( The New Yorker)

“There is in Flannery O’Connor a fierceness of literary gesture, an angriness of observation, a facility for catching, as an animal eye in the wilderness, cunningly and at one sharp glance, the shape and detail and animal intention of enemy and foe.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

Overall, Quite Good.

I agree that Mr. Pinchot's narration is a bit more spirited than some readers would likely prefer. But I think he actually does a decent job, and the story itself is excellent. Classic Southern Gothic, from a brilliant author.

First experience with Flannery

Enjoyed this book a great deal... one of the great Catholic writers in the South...

perfect

reader is awesome!!! excellent presentation! rich story of reality and personhood and God and resisting.

Southern Gothic rubbish

This novel like the authors' others is so negative. There's a point where the ugly characters in a story make it hard to finish a book. That's the case with this wise blood. The characters are so confrontational and stereotypical you can almost hear the banjo music in the background.

Great book. Dislike reader

Extremely good book but the reader is trying too hard. It’s like the high school drama team version of Wise Blood.