Reading the 20th Century discussion

Here is a thread to discuss anything related to Carson McCullers.

After being blown away by her The Member of the Wedding (July 2026 buddy read), I've just read Reflections in a Golden Eye: it's much clearer to see the Southern Gothic-ness of this book, all heat, and perverse and grotesque emotions and actions - I loved it!

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Roman Clodia wrote: "After being blown away by her The Member of the Wedding (July 2026 buddy read), I've just read Reflections in a Golden Eye: it's much clearer to see the Southern Gothic..."

I'm so glad you loved it! I bet you'll like the rest of her work too. She's so impressive. I think her short stories are up next for me, but I would like to get around to the biography you mentioned.

Some good articles in the New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

Sadly paywalled for me but hopefully others can read these - thanks all the same, Blaine. I have the new biography which I'll be starting today.

Kathleen wrote: "I think her short stories are up next for me"

The Penguin The Ballad of the Sad Café also contains a selection of short stories so I'm looking forward to those too.

McCullers writes intensity and depth so her writing seems to work vertically rather than horizontally, if that makes sense: few pages but so much to think about and savour.

Fascinating discussion on the thread about member of the wedding, although I assumed everybody knew she was queer, she's an iconic figure. For me nothing else lived up to The Member of the Wedding thought it was a near-perfect novel.

If anybody wants more/other perspectives about her life there's Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir. I found it a little disappointing but some interesting info. There's also February House: The Story of W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn which charts her time living communally in New York.

I literally knew nothing about her and, in my ignorance, slightly wondered if I was reading the queerness into Member of the Wedding - a book which is still haunting me.

Thanks, the February House period sounds fascinating from the biography I read- I'd love to know more about Gypsy Rose Lee, especially.

I just read The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (not the stories, just the novella, on the advice of my husband.

And! While I haven't entirely loved McCullers in her big-name works, I really, really liked this one. It is a bit more of a fable, a bit more grotesque, less interior... maybe this is what I liked of it as I haven't entirely loved being in the head of her child protagonists. There's an almost mythic dimension at the end.

For McCullers fans, it's a quick read.

Ooh, thanks for the reminder, Emmeline! I have this on my Kindle but, as usual, have so much more I want to read than I can physically fit in - I'm about to start the new Cusk. But maybe I'll follow you and just slip in the novella for the moment...

I read The Ballad of the Sad Café (following Emmeline's prompt - thanks!) and loved it. I don't know how McCullers does it but behind all the oddities of characters, there's something penetrating and true in her writing, to me at least:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...