Books with title The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

"The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" was published in the spring of 1940, and was immediately a literary sensation. Carson McCullers was only twenty-three years old, had lived in a small southern town for most of her life, and this was her first novel. But she had read widely in Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Eugene O'Neill, and her knowledge and insight into her characters transcended her real experience. Mick Kelly, the adolescent at the center of this strange and brooding novel, is very much the girl McCullers had been in Georgia -- passionately musical, and attracted to freaks and outcasts. Mick's spiritual kinship with John Singer, a deaf mute, and with other social misfits, provides a haunting look into the abyss encountered by human beings in their attempts at love. Years later, McCullers's friend Tennessee Williams wrote that she "owned the heart and the deep understanding of it, but in addition she had that 'tongue of angels' that gave her power to sing of it, to make of it an anthem."

A story set in a mid-sized mill town in Georgia, it weaves together the lives of five very different people - John Singer, a deaf-mute; Mick Kelly, a tomboyish girl who loves music; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Copeland, an idealistic African American physician. Singer, generally considered to be the main character, is a memorable character, as he navigates the loss of his best friend, Antonapoulos, another deaf-mute, who is locked up in a mental asylum when his behavior becomes erratic after an illness. The other characters revolve around Singer, who touches each of their lives in a profound way, although because of the communication gap due to his inability to talk, the other characters often see the relationship very differently than Singer does, whose attention is often focused on Antonapoulos. It was ranked 17th by Modern Library on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century and Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.