Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Everything That Rises Must Converge

By: Flannery O’Connor
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot, Karen White, Mark Bramhall, Lorna Raver
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.99

Buy Now for £13.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment.

The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. The protagonist, Julian Chestny, is hypocritically disdainful of his mother's prejudices, but his smug selfishness is replaced with childish fear when she suffers a fatal stroke after being struck by a black woman she has insulted out of oblivious ignorance rather than malice.

Similarly, “The Comforts of Home” is about an intellectual son with an Oedipus complex. Driven by the voice of his dead father, the son accidentally kills his sentimental mother in an attempt to murder a harlot.

The other stories are “A View of the Woods”, “Parker's Back”, “The Enduring Chill”, “Greenleaf”, “The Lame Shall Enter First”, “Revelation”, and “Judgment Day”.

Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

©1956 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965; renewed 1993 by the Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
activate_samplebutton_t1

Listeners also enjoyed...

Good Things Out of Nazareth cover art
Wise Blood cover art
The Sound and the Fury cover art
Light in August cover art
The Violent Bear It Away cover art
Finnegans Wake cover art
As I Lay Dying cover art
Collected Stories of William Faulkner cover art
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter cover art
Absalom, Absalom! cover art
The Third Policeman cover art
Sanctuary cover art
The Magic Mountain cover art
The Color Purple cover art
Intruder in the Dust cover art
Philosophical Investigations cover art

Critic reviews

“The current volume of posthumous stories is the work of a master, a writer's writer—but a reader's too—an incomparable craftsman who wrote, let it be said, some of the finest stories in our language." ( Newsweek)
“All in all they comprise the best collection of shorter fiction to have been published in America during the past twenty years.” ( Book Week)
“When I read Flannery O'Connor, I do not think of Hemingway, or Katherine Anne Porter, or Sartre, but rather of someone like Sophocles. What more can you say for a writer? I write her name with honor, for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man's fall and his dishonor.” (Thomas Merton)

What listeners say about Everything That Rises Must Converge

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    39
  • 4 Stars
    11
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    36
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    29
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Devastating and utterly wonderful

This is the first book I've read by O'connor and I'm stunned by the subtletly and force of her writing. The readers do an incredibly good job of giving expression to her characters.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Solid writing. Immersive performance.

A brilliant way into Flannery O Connor’s writing. The performances have character without going anywhere near melodramatic. And the writing itself moving touches into what it means to find beauty in the brokenness of humanity in a particular point and time and place in the American South. Recommended.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great stories, read well

Alternate stories were read by a male and female voice respectively which made the whole book more pleasant to listen to.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Gothic Tales Of The South

There may not be anything supernatural in these stories,but they do exude a sinister atmosphere.Individual tales linger in the mind,long after reading (such as "A View Of The Woods" and "Parker's Back").The stories are read alternatively by male and female voices and this works quite well.An interesting collection of Southern Gothic tales that reflects the America of the 1950's/1960's and in some ways reveals sadly,that things haven't really changed at all !

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful