The Ballad of the Sad Café is a 1951 American novella written by Carson McCullers.
In an isolated, slow-moving Southern town, an independent and surly woman known as Miss Amelia takes in a hunchback newcomer who claims to be her Cousin Lymon. Living with her alleged cousin causes Miss Amelia to become more open to her neighbors and she turns her house into a café that becomes the social center of the town. However, Miss Amelia's criminal ex-husband Marvin Macy gets released from prison and comes knocking, seemingly set on getting revenge on her after their disastrous marriage.
The book had a film adaptation in 1991.
Tropes:
- Bullying the Disabled: Marvin treats the hunchbacked Lymon like crap, calling him "Brokeback" and hitting him for no reason at all. This doesn't stop Lymon from worshiping the ground Marvin walks on.
- Freudian Excuse: Marvin's evil nature is blamed on his parents, who were both neglectful and physically violent towards him and his brother Henry.
- Huge Schoolgirl: Amelia is 6'2'', which is considered exceedingly tall for a woman, especially in the conservative South that she lives in. It's just another part of why everyone sees her as an oddball.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Despite having the same troubled upbringing, the wicked Marvin, who ended up in prison after many crimes, turned out very different from his brother Henry, who's described as saintlike and is an honest worker.
- Vague Age: Cousin Lymon has no notion of how old he is. The other characters guess he could be 12 just as well as "well past 40". He's also noted to act very childishly a lot of the time.
- Working on the Chain Gang: The town is so sleepy and isolated that watching the chain gang work is considered entertainment. The coda to the story is a scene of twelve men in a chain gang patching a highway and singing, with the beautiful music they make sounding as though it's coming from the earth and leaving anyone who listens in awe.
