Recommendations
Books Like Wise Blood
Best books to read after Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is her most disturbing and most original novel — Hazel Motes, the Church Without Christ, grace arriving through violence. These recommendations continue the O'Connor canon, explore the southern gothic tradition, or engage with the literary tradition of the devout Catholic novelist and short story writer.
- 1
Buy on AmazonA Good Man Is Hard to Find
by Flannery O'Connor
The essential O'Connor story collection — 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,' 'Good Country People,' 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own,' required reading alongside Wise Blood.
- 2
Buy on AmazonThe Violent Bear It Away
by Flannery O'Connor
The second and final O'Connor novel — Francis Tarwater fleeing his great-uncle's prophetic call, denser and more concentrated than Wise Blood, the companion novel.
- 3
Buy on AmazonEverything That Rises Must Converge
by Flannery O'Connor
The posthumous story collection — 'Everything That Rises Must Converge,' 'Parker's Back,' 'Revelation,' the late O'Connor stories many consider her finest work.
- 4
Buy on AmazonBlood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy
The Judge as violent grace — McCarthy's most disturbing novel shares O'Connor's willingness to use extreme violence as the vehicle for metaphysical truth, the most directly O'Connoresque of the major McCarthy novels.
- 5
Buy on AmazonThe Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
The southern gothic predecessor — Faulkner's Compson family in Mississippi, the southern tradition of spiritual decay and grotesque characters that O'Connor inherits and transforms through her Catholic lens.
- 6
Buy on AmazonMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt
Savannah, Georgia's grotesque cast of characters in a non-fiction narrative — the real-world southern gothic that reads like O'Connor made into journalism.
- 7
Buy on AmazonLolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The unreliable narrator as monster — like Hazel Motes, Humbert Humbert is a character who believes his own elaborate self-justification while the reader sees the damage beneath, the other great mid-century disturbing first-person narrative.
- 8
Buy on AmazonThe Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
The whisky priest in Mexico — Greene's Catholic novel of a man with genuine faith being destroyed by institutional religion, the British Catholic novelist's equivalent to O'Connor's American grotesque.
More Wise Blood Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.