So I am one of those who loved The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, although to this day I struggle to explain why. The characters are almost alien as to prevent my connection with them, but their struggles, desires and needs are absolutely something I can feel and understand. I found the novel The Ballad of the Sad Café to be very similar. The characters seemed to be designed to come across as foreign in many ways, but the motivations of Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy make them real. It is almost as if their strange exteriors bring greater focus to their interiors. I found the short stories that went along with this short novel very good as well. I especially enjoyed Wunderkind, The Jockey and Madame Zilensky and the King of England as they left me, upon completion, mulling over what they were about, the various possibilities. The other short stories, while quite good, provided me with too obvious of an answer, for my tastes, as to what I was supposed to understand or learn. ( )