Flannery O'connor's Sacramental Art

　　"Susan Srigley's Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art is a wonderful and critically important book, the first to explore O'Connor's ethic of responsibility. In taking up this new topic, Srigley's spirited study gives fresh evidence of O'Connor as a subtle moral thinker and mindful artist." —Richard Giannone, Fordham University
　　
　　"Susan Srigley's book is a masterful integration of O'Connor's anthropology, her Catholic theological and philosophical beliefs, and her unique storyteller's art. Concentrating on O'Connor's belief in an ethic of communal responsibility, Srigley convincingly demonstrates how O'Connor's fiction witnesses to the invisible forces of love and charity that unite us to God and to each other. Her analysis is orginial, powerfully-written, and rich in discernment and wisdom—a major contribution to O'Connor studies." —John F. Desmond, author of Risen Sons: Flannery O'Connor's Vision of History
　　
　　"Although O'Connor once declared that 'compassion' was a word 'which no book jacket can do without,' Susan Srigley's Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art demonstrates that it was indeed a well-earned virtue of O'Connor's art. Srigley shows how her fiction enacts an ethic of responsibility that summons characters from their isolation and autonomy and directs them toward a heartfelt responsiveness to the needs of others. Compassion, too, underwrites Srigley's book. It is not the kind of hazy sentimentality that O'Connor exposed in her fiction but the far more demanding form that she described as a readiness to be 'in travail with and for creation in its subjection to vanity.' Srigley provides sensitive readings of O'Connor's eogtists, judges them wihtout self-righteousness, and subtly responds to the way they may discover their wide-ranging accountability." —Gary Ciuba, Kent State University
　　
　　"At last, the book on Flannery O'Connor so many of us have been waiting for. It's erudite, sensitive to literary values, beautifully written . . . and theologically profound. Excellent."—Graham Ward, University of Manchester.
　　
　　"Susan Srigley has written a book on O'Connor like no other. In this gracefully written and massively researched work, she lays out the distinctively Catholic character of O'Connor's artistry as no one else has done." —Ralph Wood, Baylor University
　　
　　The writings and life of Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) have enjoyed considerable attention both from admirers of her work and from scholars. In this distinctive book, Susan Srigley charts new ground in revealing how O'Connor's ethics are inextricably linked to her role as a storyteller, and how her moral vision is expressed through the dramatic narrative of her fiction. Srigley elucidates O'Connor's sacramental vision by showing how it is embodied morally within her fiction as an ethic of responsibility. In developing this argument Srigley offers a detailed analysis of the Thomistic sources for O'Connor's understanding of theology and art.
　　
　　Srigley contends that O'Connor's ethical vision of responsibility opens a fruitful path for understanding her religious ideas as they are expressed in the lives and loves of her fictional characters. O'Connor's characters show that responsibility is a living moral action not an abstract code of behavior. For O'Connor, ethical choices are not dictated by religious doctrine, but rather are an engagement with and response to reality.
　　
　　Srigley further argues that O'Connor's ethics are not systematic, formulaic, or prescriptive. As a storyteller, she explores the moral complexities of life in their most concrete and dramatic form. Behaviors that appear in her fiction such as racism, sexism, or nihilism are exposed as inherently irresponsible. Approaching O'Connor's fiction from a moral perspective often better illuminates the dramatic struggle of a story, not because it offers a religious solution to a particular issue, but because the choices each character makes reveal a vision of reality that is either meaningful and sustainable or narrow and destructive.
　　
　　Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art reveals O'Connor's role as a prophetic novelist whose moral questions speak to the modern world with rare force. It will be welcomed by anyone who appreciates the moral or religious dimensions of her writing.