The symmetry of suffering …

… Review: Short stories that show the wasteland of contemporary American Catholic life, but also a little hope | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Hren’s writing inhabits that region Louise Cowan described as “infernal comedy,” a state in which “grace is utterly absent and where selfishness and malice prevail” and “lust, avarice, hypocrisy, and treachery are the vices most prevalent.” Why read such painful imitations of our afflicted world? What Flannery O’Connor said 60 years ago is no less true today: We too often forget the cost of redemption and seek from literature simple pleasure rather than spiritual transformation.