在找书的时候忽然看到了《好人难寻》这个名字，想起《岛上书店》中见过这本书名，似乎还是女主人公最喜欢的一本书。于是就决定了要读，并且正好锻炼下自己的英文。

火车上读书总是容易被各种事情分心，第一遍的时候恍恍惚惚读到老妇人的儿子被杀，觉得有些莫名其妙。于是用晚上的时间又重新读了一遍。初读时感觉是作者调侃的几处，却已经透露出了故事的结局。

在出发前，关于老妇人穿着的描写：

Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.

在出车祸后，老妇人孙女的一句话：

“But nobody’s killed,” June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side.

奥康纳对人物的刻画相当鲜明，下笔也很犀利，没有半句废话。喜欢打小算盘且喋喋不休的老太太、口无遮拦的孩子、沉默寡言没有担当的儿子、呆呆的妻子、冷血的罪犯。

然而，我还是觉得罪犯The Misfit杀光六人有点太过冷血，被老太太认出而杀人灭口似乎是唯一合理的解释。

在老太太与The Misfit的那段对话中，老太太一直在劝说他祷告。但这无力的劝说对The Misfit来说毫无意思，因为他自已说什么事情都应付得来，不需要上帝的帮助。他的爸爸这么形容他：

…“but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You know,’ Daddy said, **‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into everything!’ **“

对一个对上帝有所怀疑的人反复劝说他要信上帝，要祷告，是一件不太灵光的事情，而且从他们的对话中，可以知道The Misfit对生活的感悟要比老太太深刻得多。只有当遇到麻烦的时候，老太太才会把上帝搬出来救命。

The Misfit说当年被人以杀父的罪名关到监狱，但他否认自己做过那样的事情，因此他叫自己The Misfit。他觉得自己没有被公平的对待：

…I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.”

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?”

因此他就让自己的罪行配得上自己的惩罚：

“Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course,” he said, “they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right. …

读这篇短篇还是有些吃力，因为不了解宗教的原因。奥康纳本身是一个天主教徒、她26岁被确诊患红斑狼疮，终身未婚，39岁去世。或许她自身的经历对她的写作风格和方式有一定的影响，知道了她的下面这句话，就不难理解为什么她笔下的人物如此不幸了：

“对于耳背的人，你得大声喊叫他才能听见；对于接近失明的人，你得把人物画得大而惊人他才能看清。”

“我的小说的主题就是：上帝的恩惠出现在魔鬼操纵的领地。”