The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) - Carson McCullers

Written by Carson McCullers
Read by Cherry Jones
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperAudio
Release date: July 6, 2004
Duration: 12:28:25

With the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters’ inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers’ finest work, and an enduring masterpiece.

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. Each one yearns for escape from small-town life. When Singer’s mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book’s heroine (loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Brilliantly attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated–and, through Mick Kelly, to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

McCullers had the ability “to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness.” Hers is a humanity that touches all who come to her work, whether for the first time or, as so many do, time and time again. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, most enduring best.

There are many ways to describe this book: heartbreaking, stunning, unforgettable, human. However it is described, McCullers’s masterpiece is riveting reading because of its appeal to our sense of morality and the way it touches on race, class, religion, and family. Narrator Cherry Jones is perfect for this work. She has a quirky, natural reading voice that draws us into the novel and the ability to create riveting characters and accents that capture the mood and pacing of the time. Jones inhabits each person we meet, creating a moral center that she uses to complement McCullers’s words. These people have real emotions, and they make critical mistakes we can identify with. Together, narrator and author have created a world worth listening to. R.I.G. 2005 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2004,