Selected by The Guardian as one of 1,000 novels you must read before you die.
"Moore has absolute control over his narrative, and Judith Hearne's descent is both excruciating and enthralling." – Anne Enright in O, The Oprah Magazine
“With his first serious book Brian was already in full possession of his technical accomplishment, his astounding ability to put himself into other people’s shoes, and his particular view of life: a tragic view....He was to prove incapable of writing a bad book, and his considerable output was to include several more that were outstandingly good; but to my mind he never wrote anything more moving and more true than Judith Hearne.”—Diana Athill
“In virtually all of Moore's novels, there is a dramatic, vital connection between protagonist and place: Judith Hearne, the Catholic spinster drifting into alcoholism and isolation, is the lyric embodiment of repressed, claustrophobic Belfast, a descendant of the ageing spinsters of James Joyce's Dubliners”—Joyce Carol Oates, TLS
“Brian Moore [wrote] a superb first novel; The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne reads as freshly, and as heart-breakingly, today as it did when it first appeared in 1955.”—John Banville
“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is, to my notion, everything a novel should be.”—Harper Lee (New York Times, 1960)
"Each book of [Moore’s] is dangerous, unpredictable, and amusing. He treats the novel as a trainer treats a wild beast."—Graham Greene
“Brian Moore was a wonderful writer, one of the few genuine masters of the contemporary novel.” —Thomas Flanagan
“Judith Hearne is a masterpiece.” —Richard Yates
“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne reads as freshly, and as heart-breakingly, today as it did when it first appeared in 1955.” —John Banville
“The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is undoubtedly the best-written, most intense, wildly imaginative, exuberant and powerful of [Brian Moore’s] books, and along with Connell’s Mrs. Bridge, Wallant’s The Pawnbroker, and Yates’s Revolutionary Road, remains one of the authentic if uncelebrated classics of the last twenty years.”
—DeWitt Henry, Ploughshares
"Set in Belfast in the early 1950s, Brian Moore’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is not a kind book, no, but it is utterly transfixing.... By the end of this truly brilliant, shocking novel, a story peopled by characters who make your skin crawl, the impossible has occurred: The reader both understands and feels compassion for a really awful woman."
— Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe
'Moore is surely one of the most versatile and compelling novelists writing today.' Daily Telegraph
Brian Moore's extraordinary talent was immediately recognised when The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, his debut novel, won the Authors' Club First Novel Award. A highly-acclaimed film based on the novel was recently made, starring Maggie Smith.
'I can't think of another living male novelist who writes about women with such sympathy and understanding.' Times Literary Supplement
'Remarkable... seldom in modern fiction has any character been revealed so completely or been made to seem so poignantly real.' New York Times
'An almost classic example of the power given by unity of theme... Mr Moore reveals all the qualities of a born novelist.' Sunday Times
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
