The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

Read the full post at - The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor The Complete Stories is the only collection that includes every short story Flannery O’Connor ever wrote — including “The Geranium,” which she submitted as part of her master’s thesis at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. If you’re going to read her, this is the one to get. I’ve been looking for an excuse to sit down with this collection for a long time. There are plenty of curated selections and greatest hits editions out there, but I wanted all of it. O’Connor is, in my opinion, the single greatest American short story writer — and I don’t think it’s particularly close. Her settings are the rural South. Her characters are grotesque, flawed, and uncomfortably human. Her humor is dark enough to make you feel guilty for laughing. And somewhere underneath all of it, there’s always a collision between grace and violence that hits you harder than you expect. If you’ve read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” — which you probably have —…