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Lorraine V. Murray. The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O'Connor's Spiritual Journey. Charlotte, North Carolina: Saint Benedict Press, 2009. xxxiii + 233 pp. $16.95 paper.
Since discovering Flannery O'Connor's strange yet compelling stories last year, I have been doing a lot of reading about the author who might very well have been this country's Dostoevsky had her life not been cut short by lupus at the age of 39. It was, therefore, with delight that I came across Lorraine V. Murray's book, The Abbess of Andalusia. As one who shares Murray's passion for O'Connor, I was struck by the title of this little biography, suggesting as it does the two influences that fueled O'Connor's literary imagination- her devout Catholicism and daily life at the family farm. Though Murray's book covers little new territory, it is not without its merits.
Because Murray had access to O'Connor's unpublished letters as well as other correspondence, there are numerous anecdotes here not usually encountered by the general reader. For example, we get a charming picture of what daily life at Andalusia was like for Flannery O'Connor as she is "sitting awkwardly at her typewriter trying to write while two orphaned baby quail lay chirping in a box beneath her feet" (1 70). Then, there is the delightful story of one of O'Connor's peacocks that had the vexing habit of snatching and eating lit cigarettes from the hands of unsuspecting visitors (172).
While most readers of O'Connor are familiar with her moving introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann, few I suspect have actually read the rest of the book, written by the nuns at Our Lady of Perpetual Help cancer home in Atlanta. Lorraine Murray has, and she shares with her readers the tender anecdote about the time a self-styled faith-healer came to visit Mary Ann in the cancer home. "The Lord Jesus can heal you!" he bellowed to the child repeatedly. Mary Ann "looked at him calmly and seemed non-plussed by his words. T know He can do anything. It doesn't make a bit of difference whether He heals me or not,' she said calmly. That's His business'" (84).
Many readers who are passionate about O'Connor feel compelled to idealize her. To her credit Lorraine Murray resists this temptation...