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Carson McCullers

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Landmark Series) Hardcover – Large Print, July 1, 1988

by Carson McCullers (Author)

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Print length

431 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Isis Large Print Books
Publication date

July 1, 1988
ISBN-10

1557360863
ISBN-13

978-1557360861
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Product details

Publisher : Isis Large Print Books; Large Print edition (July 1, 1988)
Language : English
Hardcover : 431 pages
ISBN-10 : 1557360863
ISBN-13 : 978-1557360861
Item Weight : 1.75 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #15,986,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,226,078 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,252 ratings

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5 star		64%
4 star		18%
3 star		9%
2 star		4%
1 star		5%

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blewis

Lives of quiet desperation

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2018

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All through the book, I kept asking myself how could someone so young as Carson McCullers have such an insight into the hearts and minds of these characters? A deaf mute who loves another mute, a man seemingly unlovable; a drunk socialist; a black doctor who wants to advance civil rights for black citizens; a young girl born into poverty with majestic dreams to learn about music and the world beyond the small Alabama town; a cafe owner with a sense of beauty and art and an interest in young female children that he doesn't understand. All of them have a special relationship with Mr. Singer, the deaf mute man who lives in the young girl's family's boarding house. They all feel Mr.Singer understands their particular problems and bring their inner thoughts and dreams to him. I am not sure yet if I have a clear understanding of all the nuances of this book, except when I reflect on her other stories and plays, they often talk of forbidden or unusual love. It will probably take more reflection on my part, but if you enjoy stories which raise more questions than answers, this is a book to read.

48 people found this helpful

Helpful

A magnificent novel of southern life in the early 20th century

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2018

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It's hard to believe that Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when she wrote this masterful novel. It is a rambling, rambunctious, and dark but brilliant insight into life in the south when racial divides were still rigidly in place. The book follows the lives of six main characters - a deaf mute, a cafe owner, a brawling drunkard communist ne'er do well, a young girl rapidly coming of age, and an elderly black doctor. The deaf mute is the central character insomuch that the other players see him as almost iconic, and assign him idealized characteristics and qualities since his inability to hear or speak makes him almost a blank canvas to be painted as each of them wishes him to be. The writing is off the charts brilliant - the author's depth of feeling for the period, the travails of life that are undergone, and the dialogue and thoughts brought forward are masterful. I almost had a feeling of being exhausted when finishing the book, having been taken on a roller coaster ride of emotions and perspectives. I loved the book.

26 people found this helpful

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barb

Each of us ultimately is alone, and all we want is someone to understand us.

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2019

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Extraordinary novel. I read it because it was mentioned in The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells, which is also an exceptional novel about the human condition. I did a little Google research on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter after I finished it because I was curious about why I recognized the title but nothing about the book was familiar to me. It was published in 1940, before I was born. It had never been assigned to me in any class. It had been an Oprah Book Club choice years ago, but I did not read it or remember hearing about it then. I thought, then, that it must have been a movie, and it had been in 1968. But this book is significantly different than the movie. And I found it significantly different that most reviews I read on Amazon. Yes, it does cover civil rights in the Depression era Deep South, but it considers sexual orientation, political diiferences, disabilities, special abilities, the effects of poverty, and more. The common thread between the multiple story lines is how isolated people from others because of all their differences, and how important it is to feel understood by another, even when that other does not truly understand. Masterful.

17 people found this helpful

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Rachel

Lovely

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2017

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is about loneliness. 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. The townspeople are fascinated by him. He is not fascinated by them however. He just misses his friend, Spiros Antonapoulos, another deaf-mute who is sent to an insane asylum. Everyone in the nameless Georgia town experiences a form of loneliness. McCullers made me examine my own feelings as well. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a lovely novel that makes you feel all the feelings.

19 people found this helpful

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Michael D. Hill

Well Worth The Re-Read

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2014

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It's been years since I read this the first time, minutes after crying my way through the ending of the movie.

The book is fairly complex, and there were moments I felt it was a tad thick and slow. But McCullers is a master of tension, too, and the sequence leading up to -- hmmmm, how do I put this spoilerlessly -- the sequence with the rifle is an absolute textbook example of a writer in complete control of her material and her reader. Can you read "on the edge of your seat"? Why yes, yes you can.

This is a fine classic book, well deserving of its place in the canon. The outlook is dark, but not unremittingly so. The sentences are beautiful, and sometimes astonishingly so. The plot is rich, sometimes funny, not over-determined or schematic. A lovely read.

42 people found this helpful

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Brian M. Mcgowan

Not my cup of tea.

Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2017

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I know this is supposed to be a classic, but I just couldn't get into it. Honestly, that is probably more a problem with me than this book. Introspection just isn't one of the qualities I enjoy in a read.

18 people found this helpful

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JB Fruittee

Amazing that I Had Never Read This!

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2017

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The characters were very unique and interesting but not necessarily likable. The story line is dark and intense but the plot is not intended to satisfy. This is a very intriguing book and it is very mature for a 23 year old author. It reminds of "To Kill A Mockingbird" but is so much more. I heartily recommend if you like books that make you work to unpack the message from the author.

16 people found this helpful

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Beth

depressing book

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2019

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I don't care if this is a classic, it is a depressing book. Parts of it I just skimmed. No happy endings for ANYONE in this book. Sure, maybe it was true to life at the time, but I read to escape real life and this was a very sorrowful book.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mezzofanti Due

Superb story telling talent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2018

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Without doubt this book was one of the best I have read in a long time. A book of its time (1940) and probably too politically incorrect to form part of the English curriculum in our schools, it is sad that such talented writing skills and use of language cannot be appreciated by a young audience. I am indeed in awe that it was written by a 23 year old with such a remarkable writing talent, a terrific story from a superbly talented author.

9 people found this helpful

FictionFan

Only connect...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2020

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John Singer shares his life with his one friend, Spiros Antonapoulos. They are both deaf mutes and, while Singer can lip read, only Antonapolous understands his sign language. With all other people, Singer can only communicate by writing short messages on slips of paper. So when Antonapolous is committed to an asylum, Singer is left profoundly alone. He moves from the small apartment the two men had shared to a boarding house and takes all his meals at a local café, and gradually he attracts to him a small group of broken and lonely people, each of whom finds his silence allows them to talk openly to him in a way they can’t to other people.

Biff Brannon owns the cafe along with his wife, Alice. Lonely in his unsatisfactory marriage and childless, Biff watches the people who frequent the cafe and offers a kind of rough kindness to some of the misfits who happen along. Jake Blount is one such misfit – a drunk with Communist leanings who longs to meet others who share his politics. Mick Kelly is the daughter of the owners of Singer’s boarding house, a young girl whose life is circumscribed by the poverty of her circumstances, but who secretly longs to write music. And lastly of Singer’s little group of disciples is Doctor Benedict Copeland, a black doctor who has devoted his life to leading his people out of ignorance but has failed, even with his own family from whom he is now mostly estranged. Each sees in Singer someone who seems to understand them and gives them the courage to face the obstacles in their lives. But Singer, though he listens, cannot speak and lives for the rare occasions when he can take a break from work and visit his friend Antonapolous, where he frantically pours out all his pent-up thoughts through sign, to a man who seems neither to understand nor care.

For me, the stories of Biff and Jake didn’t work quite so well, though each had some points of interest. But Dr Copeland’s story is very well done, highlighting the poverty and cruel injustice experienced by black people, and the gulf between his ambition and the reality of what he could achieve within a system rigged against him. His character is also an excellent study of a man who is respected and even loved by the people he serves and leads in his wider community, but who fails utterly in his domestic life, taking his disappointments and frustrations out on his wife and children; a man so consumed with the desire to improve humanity that he fails to understand and connect with the individual needs of the humans around him.

Mick is a wonderful character and the one who gives a small glimmer of hope amid the general bleakness. McCullers’ description of her sneaking around to listen to music through the open windows of those wealthy enough to own radios and record players shows the real disparity of opportunity in this society where even the simplest cultural opportunities are available to only a fortunate few. Mick’s efforts to teach herself first to play piano and then to find a way to write down the music she hears inside her are beautifully written. Although the desperate poverty of her family means that her education has to give way to the need to earn money, there is the feeling that maybe she will somehow find a way to lead a more fulfilling life in time.

And Singer himself, for much of the book a silent background against which the stories of the others are played out, gradually becomes more vivid as the true loneliness of his life is shown – a loneliness caused, in his case, by physical rather than emotional barriers. Seemingly stable, holding down a job and surrounded by people who read into the blankness of him whatever they need and lack and then value him for that, he just wants that simple thing they see in him – a willing listener, someone who seems to understand.

While the premise is a stretch, with Singer’s deaf-mutism a rather contrived vehicle to bring this disparate group together, and while some of the stories work better than others, overall this is a profound and moving study of the ultimate aloneness and loneliness of people in a crowd, and of the universal human desire to find connection with another. The writing is beautiful, emotional but never mawkish, with deep understanding of the human heart and sympathy for human fallibility – a book that fully deserves its classic status.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

"Never mind the quality, feel the printing"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2015

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An intriguing story written with varying styles that are appropriate to the shifting focus of the narrative.
BUT, as with many Amazon e-books, the quality of the printing is unacceptably poor.
Errors are numerous and, less than half way through the book, I've started to log them:
"car" instead of ear
"fed" instead of feel
"die" instead of the
"The" instead of . The
"I" instead of !

And I expect to be faced with more irritating mistakes that have to be unravelled in context.
NOT GOOD ENOUGH AND MUST DO BETTER!

30 people found this helpful

Jeffrey

Disturbing account of life in the Southern states of the USA

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 27, 2017

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A disturbing account of life in the Southern States of the USA during the late 1930's. Incredibly believable story. Each character is a believable person and may well have lived in the towns Carson McCullers lived in. Clearly describes the racial hate that existed (still exists?) and how police fostered it, as well as the difficulties people have in living their lives.

11 people found this helpful

Hector H Taylor

This is a must for anyone appreciating incisive observation laid out in awesome language. Some of the phrases McCullers uses are

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2016

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What a book! This is a must for anyone appreciating incisive observation laid out in awesome language. Some of the phrases McCullers uses are astonishing, and they come thick and fast (that's not one of hers...) This is not a rollercoaster ride but you won't be able to put it down.
Absolutely recommended.

11 people found this helpful

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