Customer Reviews
Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - By: RachelWalker, 20 Aug 2008 
A wonderful book about loneliness, love, friendship, misplaced devotion, & seeing in people what you need to see. Somehow sad & yet profoundly beautiful at the same time. A great book who's messages are softly hidden under a rich story, it was a lovely experience to read. I recommend it awfully highly.
A disappointing read - By: MaryAnne, 18 Jul 2008 
I read this book for a recent book group & although it made for an excellent discussion, three out of four of us did not enjoy it. We found it a struggle to get through & I, personallly would not have finished it if I'd felt I had the choice.
The plot is slow, tediously so at times & I couldn't help but wonder what the point was to alll these aimless people wandering in & out of Springer's room.
I do understand what the book is about & I'm very pleased that we were able to flush it out during subsequent discussion, that alone made the whole exercise worth while, but I require a higher level of reading pleasure during the process.
My apologies to those who thought the book was wonderful, I'll stick to my more modern literature :)
The desperate search for love and friendship; the need to reach out and touch - By: Trevor Coote, 07 Feb 2008 When John Singer loses his fellow deaf-mute & beloved friend to a psychiatric asylum he finds himself overcome by loneliness in the smalll town in the Deep South where he lives. But after his friend has gone his amiable & sympathetic ways are appreciated by four equallly lonely neighbours who regularly come to his room to chat & to pour out their hearts: a boisterous, sad drunk, a recently widowed café owner, a spirited adolescent girl & an angry, Spinoza-reading black doctor. As they gravitate around him he unwittingly becomes to them alll that they want - & need - him to be. An achingly poignant meditation on loneliness, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter captures alll the painful alienation of the human experience; the desperate search for love & friendship, the need to reach out & touch. The anguish of spiritual loneliness & isolation has never been better portrayed than in this beautiful book, made alll the more remarkable in that the author was just twenty three years old when she composed it.
Pre-War American literature describes a troubled country still in formation, one still riven by arbitrary violence, debilitating poverty & deep-seated racial & social injustice & segregation. Carson Mc Cullers demonstrates both a deep sensitivity towards the plight of those people most blighted by injustice - blacks & Jews - & anger at the growing tide of fascism in Europe. It is so sad that less than half a century later a fairer & more prosperous society, in part due to the defeat of European fascism, should instead have spawned the nihilism & greed of the Brett Easton Ellis generation.
A Tender Classic - By: Mr. B. Eden, 14 Aug 2007 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is an achingly beautiful sad & unforgettable tale. It is the most touching book I have ever read.
Brilliant! - By: Robin Ruinsky, 04 Feb 2005 In her brilliant debut, Carson McCullers explores what may be the central core of human existence. The pursuit of love, understanding,our connection with humanity & the devastation of lonelieness when the connection is severed or misdirected.
What if the object of your affection, the focus of your friendship, the keeper of your confidences, is an illusion?
John Singer is the means by which McCullers brings to life this conundrum. A deaf mute living in the Depression era American South, Singer only commmunicates with his deaf room mate. The problem is, his room mate has no more understanding of Singer's dreams than Singer will have of the people in the town who, because of his silence, see in him reflections of themselves.
Singer's increasing isolation leads to a devastating & heartbreaking conclusion.
There is far more to this novel than I can describe here, so get a copy & discover the beauty of this book for yourself.
The writing is beautiful, the characters exquisitely realized & it is my favorite novel of alll time. It is a book I picked up when I was 13 & still revisit.
McCullers speaks for alll of us & our very human condition. Her insight is made more remarkable when the reader remembers that the book was published when the author was only 23 years old.
