The Ballad of the Sad Café
Author: Carson McCullers
Published by: Penguin Little Clothbound Classics
Pages: 128
Format: Hardback
My Rating: ★★★
Published by: Penguin Little Clothbound Classics
Pages: 128
Format: Hardback
My Rating: ★★★
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Few writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers.
The Ballad of the Sad Café is her masterpiece: an unruly, bittersweet novella concerning the most unlikely of love triangles.
Few writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers.
The Ballad of the Sad Café is her masterpiece: an unruly, bittersweet novella concerning the most unlikely of love triangles.
My thoughts:
The Ballad of the Sad Café is a richly composed novella written by Carson McCullers. The book is a cautionary tale and a compelling human story that gripped me from the first page.
The characters are truly unique; Amelia Evans is a towering woman, both in physical stature and in energy, though her size has made her both awkward and lonely. She devotes her life to her father, and when he passes away, she takes over his business running the town's general store. After a brief failed marriage that ended with her husband in jail, Amelia keeps to herself and focuses on her work at the store.
Then, a hunchback named Lymon arrives in town claiming to be Amelia’s cousin. Immediately, he brings out something in Miss Amelia that the community has never seen before.
She shows him warmth and kindness, offering food and drink as he joins her for dinner in her home. After going up to her bedroom, the hunchback and Miss Amelia seem to disappear for the next two days. Obviously, this generates considerable gossip in the small town, with locals even suggesting that Miss Amelia has murdered the poor hunchback.
Yet after a few days, the hunchback reappears. He is happy, clean, and healthy. The change that Lymon brings over his cousin Miss Amelia also gradually brings changes to the general store. Miss Amelia begins selling whiskey and offering dinner each night at the store, providing the town with its only café. The townspeople watch with shock and awe as Miss Amelia launches something like a married life with Lymon. She treats him with ease and openness, sharing everything she can. The only thing neither she nor the townspeople tell Lymon about is her first marriage to Marvin.
Six years later, Marvin gets out of jail and promptly shows up in front of the general store whilst Miss Amelia is out of town. With Miss Amelia not around, Marvin trains his attentions on the hunchback. He follows Lymon around, unnerving him to the point that the hunchback decides to try to win him over, whoever the stranger is. Lymon attempts to befriend Marvin and when Miss Amelia arrives home, she finds the two men getting acquainted. She is livid as she realises Lymon's energies are no longer focused on her.
What follows is an unruly, bittersweet tale concerning the most unlikely of love triangles. The novella later ends with "The Twelve Mortal Men", a brief passage about twelve men in a chain-gang, whose actions outline what happened in the town.
There’s a great deal of substance in this richly composed novella. McCullers presents a vivid depiction of nature, culture, and daily living in the rural southern setting.
I’d describe The Ballad of the Sad Café as a Southern Gothic narrative revolving around a strange young woman who becomes the victim of a sinister plot in her isolated town. But it is also a fascinating and terrifying story of a love triangle that explores the immense complexity of love.
Overall reaction: