A review by nevermoreliterature
Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers

4.0

'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.