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duffypratt 's review for:
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe: And Other Stories
by Carson McCullers
I only read the title story, since I don't actually have this edition. Instead, I have a Library of America collection of novels, and this is easily the shortest novel.
McCullers writes beautifully, and on a sentence by sentence level I love her work, but I keep looking for more. Here, I felt like the book should either be 1/3rd the length, or perhaps 3-4 times as long as it was. It could have made a really fine shorter story, and I could also perhaps have become involved if it were longer and had a bit more meat on the bone. Instead, I felt both like it dragged a little, and also like I could have liked it better if only there was more.
As in her other books, I found little to like about any of her characters, but I think that may just be the norm for them. At best, I find myself rising to the level of pity. But here, I thought the characters were peculiar without being interesting. So I didn't care for them, and I wasn't fascinated either, and that's a truly sorry combination. In the hands of a lesser writer, this would have been a recipe for disaster. But McCullers raises it above that level, and I found the book to be OK, but still a disappointment.
McCullers writes beautifully, and on a sentence by sentence level I love her work, but I keep looking for more. Here, I felt like the book should either be 1/3rd the length, or perhaps 3-4 times as long as it was. It could have made a really fine shorter story, and I could also perhaps have become involved if it were longer and had a bit more meat on the bone. Instead, I felt both like it dragged a little, and also like I could have liked it better if only there was more.
As in her other books, I found little to like about any of her characters, but I think that may just be the norm for them. At best, I find myself rising to the level of pity. But here, I thought the characters were peculiar without being interesting. So I didn't care for them, and I wasn't fascinated either, and that's a truly sorry combination. In the hands of a lesser writer, this would have been a recipe for disaster. But McCullers raises it above that level, and I found the book to be OK, but still a disappointment.