- Paperback: 359 pages
- Publisher: Clarion Books; 1st Mariner Books Ed edition (5 Aug 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0618526412
- ISBN-13: 978-0618526413
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 12.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 28,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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 Cafeacute; (1991).
--This text refers to the
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IN THE town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Read the first page
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IN THE town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
BORING?!?! Good heavens. I read this book years ago (in high school) and I loved it. I re-read it recently, and found it even more beautiful. It takes us to the meaning of loneliness and love in ways that other books don't. If you can appreciate works that pack a lot of meaning into the limited actions of characters (It's not a thriller, gang) and ask the reader to associate rather than merely see, you'll love this book. My favorite book is a toss up between this and To Kill a Mockingbird.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is quite simply one of the most beautiful novels I have read, and a great work of modern American literature. Carson McCullers' writing is deft yet delicate, and she paints a portrait of small town life with brilliant clarity. The characters, whilst being ordinary people, are shown to be extraordinary in simply being who they are. A very moving and intelligent work.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
McCullers gets deep inside a dozen characters and turns them into living, breathing people full of hope and fear, love, unhappiness and hatred.
Lou runs a café and is a kind man with a deep interest in the people he serves; Jake is a self-proclaimed communist, in a cell of one because of his drinking and his inability to connect with ordinary people; Mady is a black doctor full of desire to bring his people to a better way of life, but his children bitterly disappoint him; Mick is a young girl, looking after her younger siblings, brighter than average and in love with music, but she is finding it hard to fight her way out of the expectations her family has for her.
The person who unites all of these is John Singer, a deaf mute, who listens to all that people have to say. There is a calm acceptance about this man, an other-worldly beneficence that people are touched by and by which they are given relief from the world that torments them. But Singer has a friend to whom he has given his heart - a huge, grotesque Greek man with a saintly and child-like disposition who is judged mentally disturbed and sent to live in an institution by his cousin, who fears he will be made responsible for him. This is not a sexual love on Singer's part, but is something plain and simple and completely fixed in his heart and mind.
The character of Singer is at the centre of each of the stories - his goodness, even saintliness, is manifest - yet he is deaf - he cannot hear what they say and the irony of his surname is perhaps intentional, since it seems that the peace he brings people is something ineffable, something people cannot resist - like, perhaps, a beautiful song?
The novel is full of incident and development, covering a year in the lives of these mill town people, many of whom are poverty-stricken and ignorant. The deep divisions between the races is shown unflinchingly, yet Singer walks at night in both the black and the white areas without molestation.
Their stories are fraught with tragedy and trouble, but there are remarkable moments of uplifting insight and beauty. In the end John Singer does not recognise the power he has to help and comfort others, but the novel ends on a note that promises hope for at least some of these people and their families.
Lou runs a café and is a kind man with a deep interest in the people he serves; Jake is a self-proclaimed communist, in a cell of one because of his drinking and his inability to connect with ordinary people; Mady is a black doctor full of desire to bring his people to a better way of life, but his children bitterly disappoint him; Mick is a young girl, looking after her younger siblings, brighter than average and in love with music, but she is finding it hard to fight her way out of the expectations her family has for her.
The person who unites all of these is John Singer, a deaf mute, who listens to all that people have to say. There is a calm acceptance about this man, an other-worldly beneficence that people are touched by and by which they are given relief from the world that torments them. But Singer has a friend to whom he has given his heart - a huge, grotesque Greek man with a saintly and child-like disposition who is judged mentally disturbed and sent to live in an institution by his cousin, who fears he will be made responsible for him. This is not a sexual love on Singer's part, but is something plain and simple and completely fixed in his heart and mind.
The character of Singer is at the centre of each of the stories - his goodness, even saintliness, is manifest - yet he is deaf - he cannot hear what they say and the irony of his surname is perhaps intentional, since it seems that the peace he brings people is something ineffable, something people cannot resist - like, perhaps, a beautiful song?
The novel is full of incident and development, covering a year in the lives of these mill town people, many of whom are poverty-stricken and ignorant. The deep divisions between the races is shown unflinchingly, yet Singer walks at night in both the black and the white areas without molestation.
Their stories are fraught with tragedy and trouble, but there are remarkable moments of uplifting insight and beauty. In the end John Singer does not recognise the power he has to help and comfort others, but the novel ends on a note that promises hope for at least some of these people and their families.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Books on order
Two copies of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter " have arrived, late but in good order, and am very satisfied. Thank you Marietta N.
Published 5 months ago by Marietta
heart is a lonely hunter
great book, mccullers is a great writer. story about the misfits , and we all response to that with a part of ourselves
Published 7 months ago by bonbon
A classic in every sense of the word!
This is a rare, rare book. The Heart Is A Lonley Hunter is also typical southern gothic and tells a fantastic story of tragedy in a small southen town and the story of a young girl... Read more
Published on 6 Nov 2005
A book that will have you thinking!
There is much to be said about this book and all of it good. The characters within the pages are memorable and demonstrate the old saying that "everyone is their own world". Read more
Published on 11 May 2004 by Frederick A. Babb
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