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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers Books

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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers Books

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.


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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers Books Reviews

The writing in this book is wonderfully subtle. It's as though Carson McCullers spends the whole novel chopping quietly away at a grand old oak tree. You don't realize so much is happening in the small everyday acts of these characters until the end when the whole tree comes down, leaving everyone shocked and sad and hyper-aware of a vast emptiness left behind.

The novel centers around John Singer, a deaf-mute who lives happily contented with his best friend, another deaf-mute, until the friend goes insane and must be institutionalized. Singer moves into a boarding house and becomes the receptacle for the dreams, thoughts, rants and loneliness of the rest of the main characters in the book including young Mick Kelly, the teenage girl whose family owns the boarding house, Dr. Copeland, the town's only black doctor, Biff Brannon, a restaurant owner, and Jake Blount, a drunk mad with his ideas about how society should work. They all talk and talk at Singer, sometimes to his bewilderment, but none of them listen to him. Then, when tragedy strikes, they are all shocked and surprised. Isn't that how life usually works, in too many sad and awful ways to mention?

I enjoyed "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" for McCullers's well-observed scenes and the thought-provoking clarity with which she sees the predicament of each of her characters. The way she develops this languid world of the south, layer upon layer, with sights, sounds, smells and the overall feeling of impotent dreams and disappointed hopes is truly a marvel to behold. I shall remember always the many small gestures that I found so touching as to be heartbreaking the way Singer would look earnestly into the face of his friend before they parted each day to go to work; Mick spray painting the names of her idols on the walls of a house and then lying up on the roof so she could make her plans; Dr. Copeland wanting so much to reach out to his family, but being tongue-tied as though he and they would forever speak a different language; Biff Brannon dotting his dead wife's perfume to his temples and absorbing the memories of when he had loved.

I highly recommend this book with the hope that each person who reads it will come away pondering the state of their own "inside rooms," and take care to tend and spend time in that cherished space.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.