Product Description

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was Carson McCullers' first novel, written in 1940. Set in a small town in the American South, it is the story of a group of people who have little in common except that they are all hopelessly lonely. A young girl, a drunken socialist and a black doctor are drawn to a gentle, sympathetic deaf mute, whose presence changes their lives. This powerful exploration of alienation is both moving and perceptive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12196 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Carson McCullers was born in 1917. She is the critically acclaimed author of several popular novels in the 1940s and '50s, including The Member of the Wedding (1946). Her novels frequently depicted life in small towns of the southeastern United States and were marked by themes of loneliness and spiritual isolation. McCullers suffered from ill health most of her adult life, including a series of strokes that began when she was in her 20s; she died at the age of 50. The Member of the Wedding was dramatized for the stage in the 1950s and filmed in 1952 and 1997. Other films based on her books are Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967, with Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968, starring Alan Arkin) and The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991).

Customer Reviews

Brilliant!
In her brilliant debut, Carson McCullers explores what may be the central core of human existence. The pursuit of love, understanding,our connection with humanity and the devastation of lonelieness when the connection is severed or misdirected.
What if the object of your affection, the focus of your friendship, the keeper of your confidences, is an illusion?
John Singer is the means by which McCullers brings to life this conundrum. A deaf mute living in the Depression era American South, Singer only commmunicates with his deaf room mate. The problem is, his room mate has no more understanding of Singer's dreams than Singer will have of the people in the town who, because of his silence, see in him reflections of themselves.
Singer's increasing isolation leads to a devastating and heartbreaking conclusion.
There is far more to this novel than I can describe here, so get a copy and discover the beauty of this book for yourself.
The writing is beautiful, the characters exquisitely realized and it is my favorite novel of all time. It is a book I picked up when I was 13 and still revisit.
McCullers speaks for all of us and our very human condition. Her insight is made more remarkable when the reader remembers that the book was published when the author was only 23 years old.

Beautiful, sad and funny
The lives of a number of outsiders in a small town in the American south cross and recross without the character's alienness or isolation ever being relieved. Watch for the comical clash between the two Marxists: an intellectual doctor and a radical worker who can't agree on anything.
At the novel's heart is John Singer (a desperately ironic choice of name), a deaf man who choses also to be mute. The eyes of his blind companion, he is also the confessor of the town's other lonely people, who find fruitless comfort in his patient attention.
The prose is astonishingly beautiful and the mood of the novel stays with the reader for days afterwards. Deeper and more moving than "The Ballad of the Sad Café", this is probably Carson McCullers's best work.

One of the greatest books ever written.
To say that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of the greatest books ever written, is not hyperbole. This novel truely is a staggering work. I have found myself alluding to it, countless times in the eight years since I read it first. It has illuminated my understanding of relationships and interdependancy. Mrs McCullers must rank alongside Forster, Lawrence, Naipaul and Conrad as one of the great exporers of the dark and lonely soul.