A GOOD HARD LOOK

Napolitano’s book, set during the two years preceding the death of its pivotal character, Flannery O’Connor, is fiction, not biography. On the night before Cookie and Melvin’s wedding, O’Connor’s peacocks set up an unholy racket, leading to a series of bizarre events. With sections divided into “Good,” “Hard,” and “Look,” Debra Monk’s performance deftly delineates each of the characters whose lives appear to revolve around the famous ailing author. (O’Connor suffered from lupus, the autoimmune disease that killed her father.) Monk offers an unsentimental O’Connor and a confused, unhappy Melvin. She manages a subtle shrewishness as Cookie and mind-numbing ennui as Lona, the police chief’s wife. Napolitano’s stark prose depicts the unexamined lives of the residents of Milledgeville, Georgia, O’Connor’s hometown, and Monk delivers all truthfully. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2011]