Product Description

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5849 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-21
• Released on: 2004-04-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"A remarkable book . . . [McCullers] writes with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming." (The New York Times )

"Quite remarkable . . . McCullers leaves her characters hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory." (The Nation )

"To me the most impressive aspect of 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race." -- Richard Wright (New Republic )

"One cannot help remarking that this is an extraordinary novel to have been written by a young woman of twenty-two; but the more important fact is that it is an extraordinary novel in its own right, considerations of authorship apart." -- Saturday Review of Literature (Saturday Review )

"[McCullers] writes with a calm and factual realism, and with a deep and abiding insight into human psychology. She does so without an iota of vulgarity and bawdiness, in a manner which many a present day novelist would do well to study." (Boston Globe )

"There is not only the delicately sensed need that one might expect youth to know but an even more delicately sensed ironic knowledge." (The Chicago Tribune )

"To me the most impressive aspect of THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is
the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first
time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease
and justice of those of her own race. This cannot be accounted for
stylistically or politically; it seems to stem from an attitude toward
life." -- Richard Wright

"When one puts [this book] down, it is with . . . a feeling of having been nourished by the truth." --May Sarton

"Sensitively conceived and expertly told . . . Its quality as writing and the intensity of its theme combine to make it one of the outstanding novels of recent years." --Times-Picayune

"The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a miracle of compassion, pity, and irony. Form and matter are perfectly blended in the novel." --Virginia Quarterly Review

Inside Flap Copy
When she was only twenty-three, Carson  McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She  was very special, one of America's superlative  writers who conjures up a vision of existence as  terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering  voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation  that underlies the human condition. This novel is  the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's  enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange  young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small  Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal.  The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the  rejected. Some fight their loneliness with  violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some  -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal  search for beauty.

About the Author
Carson McCullers (1917-1967) was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Clock Without Hands. Born in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917, she became a promising pianist and enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York when she was seventeen, but lacking money for tuition, she never attended classes. Instead she studied writing at Columbia University, which ultimately led to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the novel that made her an overnight literary sensation. On September 29, 1967, at age fifty, she died in Nyack, New York, where she is buried.

Customer Reviews

Shades of gray
This book deals with life in shades of gray, and my feelings about this book are also in shades of gray. Carson McCullers tackles issues that were prominent in the 1930's, including socialism, poverty, and racism. The writing is excellent, but I found this book dreary. Pretty much, it is about disappointment in life. If a positive message was tucked in, I couldn't glean it. It was hard to read - I would put it down and avoid picking it back up. The author did a good job of drawing her characters in an interesting way, and at a book club we had a lively and riveting discussion on the meaning of the deaf-mute character. I have thought about this book a lot since finishing it - a characteristic that I usually consider the mark of a great book. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend it to just any casual reader.

Left me cold
Maybe I'm just not a fan of the Southern Gothic genre to which this novel belongs, but man oh man, did I not "get" this book. I found it horribly tortuous and plodding in its pace, and felt that it all ultimately amounted to nothing special or remarkable at all. I had to force myself to finish it, and was always loathe to pick it up. I never felt invested in the characters or engaged in any of their stories, and the whole thing just left me feeling hollow inside. At times I would find particular storylines intriguing, but because of the way in which the story is told, all too soon I'd be tracking someone else's tale, and just as it got interesting, you'd have to switch gears and follow someone else's journey. Lather, rinse, repeat. None of the stories wind up being very meaty and left me incredibly hungry.

Not sure why this book is a classic or why it has received so much praise. Yes, people in very different walks of life and situations can be lonely, and loneliness can even bring people together and provide a common comfort. It's not that the message there is trite, it's just that the delivery was really not spectacular or moving at all. I couldn't help drawing parallels to "To Kill a Mocking Bird" the entire time I was reading this, and while I don't love that book either, I think you'd probably be better served reading it than this.

Still a great read
This book was on many high school reading lists and I decided to re-read it 40 years after my first time. It's still a great read, evocative of an interesting period, like stepping backwards in time. The message on the other hand is timeless, reminding those who think we live in a difficult period that all times are challenging. Readers sensitive to racial stereotyping would do well to remember that, when this book was written inclusion of African-Americans in a novel, much less one who is a doctor, was very unusual. Well worth the time.