The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
First published 1940 · English · 346 pages
- Novels
- Young adult
This novel is set in a small mill town in the American South in the 1930s. At its centre is John Singer, a deaf man who lives quietly and becomes the confidant of several lonely people. They include a restless adolescent girl, a café owner, a troubled drifter and a doctor concerned with the injustices faced by Black Americans. Each of them pours out hopes and frustrations to Singer and imagines that he understands them completely. McCullers explores isolation, the need to be heard and the gap between what people long for and what they receive. It is a tender, serious portrait of ordinary lives and remains her best-known work.
Quotes
In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise.
I'm one who knows. I'm a stranger in a strange land.
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram full of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.