Carson McCullers

His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love.

The Haunted Boy

Iris van der zanden

He hated John, as you hate people you have to need so badly.

Emmett

McCullers is exquisite, attentive to the constraints and terrors of family spaces, the complexity of adult feeling or the stunning simplicity of a child's innocent fear. This Penguin Modern volume is an excellent sampler and testament to her work. Each story is full and complete, carefully brought to fruition, intriguing beginnings building to a steady climax and satisfying resolution. Her narratives leave the reader, when they end, with the emotional and intellectual fulfillment of experiencing a well-constructed short story fully explored and condensed for their length, perfect for their form with nothing left over. Horror, sorrow, regret, joy, brim, glimmer, dart in and out of sight like vivid fish in a deep pond. There is a dignity in her writing that parallels mid-century Hollywood's strong characters and transferred onto her characters in their piercing melancholy and haunting fear. The setting may be a sitting room or a bedroom, but she conveys them as they might've been experienced, as if there is nothing ephemeral or quotidian about human lives.

The Haunted Boy

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