Every single sentence in this book is perfect.

'Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out in the street and thrashed by a naked woman?'

Carson McCullers' fascinating novel takes place in the backdrop of the American South in the nineteen thirties. Focusing on an army base during peacetime, the novel follows the stench of stagnancy, as the closed quarters of the base tries to conceal the lives of our main characters from the scrutiny of the public eye.

A foreboding of doom latches onto the reader from the get-go as the author initiates the novel, revealing the committal of a murder. Treating it simply as just another fact. Making it very clear, that the reveal if saved up for a penultimate surprise would have served no purpose in the grander picture whatsoever.

The book then back-tracking to the said events, follows a set of distinct personalities. The gloomy Captain Penderton and his flamboyant wife, Leonora. The charming Major Langdon and his fragile wife, Alison. The stoic and unfathomable, Private Williams. As well as, the Gay Filipino Housekeeper with his timely quips, capping off the bizarre menagerie.

Despite clocking in around roughly hundred pages, the novel moves in a languid pace. Capturing the doldrums of a life in the army base with adroit precision. The Southern Gothic set up enhances the corrupt morality of the characters, underlining their worn out conscience. While, portraying a rotten bunch of oh so lonely people, spending their days in a state of dire humdrum.

Complex themes of adultery, voyeurism, cuckoldry and most importantly, repressed homosexuality takes centre stage throughout the narrative. The characters deal with a sense of taciturn goodwill, but lunge at each other baring their fangs every now and then. The book tries to capture the universal notion of desire, both subdued and ostentatious, and the ugliness that often rears up in its apparent freedom.

McCullers, only twenty-two when she penned this novel, infuses it with her rebel spirit by dedicating the work to one Annemarie Schwarzenbach, the Swiss journalist and author, whom she romantically pursued through her short yet eventful life. The tragic conjuration of homo-erotic longing, claustrophobia within the status quo and an acute sense of loneliness seemingly traces back to the author herself.

The prose, quite straightforward, showcases a tinge of musical lyricism throughout, with lines such as, “there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth”. The narrative oft interposed with graphic descriptions and pitch black humour further enhances this basic perversion of human affairs, and elicits within the reader an experience of reading something truly worthwhile.

Pegajosa, incómoda, agobiante y a veces sin sentido: igual que tiene que ser la vida siendo un oficial en el armario en una base militar del sur de Estados Unidos en los años 30.

this cld have all been avoided if the captain and the private just f*cked

I don't know, I just don't get Carson McCullers. I've now read this and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and I just can't care about the characters. When you have a short novel - more of a novellette - that is about the darkness of these characters, that makes it hard. Even harder: I just don't find them that dark. A little disturbed, but compared to someone like Flannery O'Connor, McCullers is just a pale shadow. I guess I feel like she misses the psychologism somehow; that plus characters I don't care about equals meh.

A disarmingly weird novel. There's a pervasive sense of foreboding which reminds me of Shirley Jackson's prose, but McCullers has an unparalleled eye for internal conflict and toxic alienation.

Okay, so, as much as I love Carson McCullers (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my all time favorites), I found this to be a bit disappointing. It's all technically there: the "freaky" characters, the sexual identity crisis(es), the "Southern Gothic"-yness of it all. But it's too short, the characters flash across the page and don't feel fleshed out. What is even the point of Anacleto, other than another "freak?" The plot never has any momentum. Am I supposed to focus on Captain Penderton's closet-case story, or Alison's depression, or Private Williams' stalking? I feel they're meant to be intertwined and show the interconnectedness humans rely on or something deep like that, but it doesn't work nearly as well as McCullers has accomplished in her other work.

What saved it, of course, is her writing. Clear and beautiful as ever, it's really the redeeming quality of the novel.