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.