In 2005, after a public interview, a man in the audience asked Marilynne Robinson a loaded question: “What do you think of Flannery O’Connor?” She demurred before admitting to disliking the way O’Connor “creates terribly defective characters and then destroys them”. She realises O’Connor intends to express the presence of Grace, in some way, but she believes this is fudging, and her definition of Grace is different. Grace is an attribute Scripture assigns to God. From the Hebrew Khen and Greek Charis, Grace is God’s transformation of life, as distinct from his gift of life. It is also a gift—free…