PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS : REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE PB – CARSON MCCULLERS

A masterpiece . . . as mature and finished as Henry James s The Turn of the Screw Time Set on a Southern army base in the 1930s, Reflections in a Golden Eye tells the story of Captain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival of Major Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair with Penderton s tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora. Upon the novel s publication in 1941, reviewers were unsure of what to make of its relatively scandalous subject matter. But a critic for Time magazine wrote, In almost any hands, such material would yield a rank fruitcake of mere arty melodrama. But Carson McCullers tells her tale with simplicity, insight, and a rare gift of phrase. Written during a time when McCullers s own marriage to Reeves was on the brink of collapse