The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

In a Georgia Mill town during the 1930s, an enigmatic John Singer, draws out the haunted confessions of an itinerant worker, a doctor, a widowed café owner, and a young girl. Each yearns for escape from small town life, but the young girl, Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music.

I think it was the wrong book, or maybe the wrong time. But after 150 pages I'm out.

–

annotated... 2001.

I'm going to lead with: not really my type of book. I read this because it was the May pick for The Perks of Being a Bookworm group; what I like about book clubs is that they are introducing me to books I would never think of reading. Sometimes this is a success, this time it wasn't.I did not enjoy actually reading this book, in fact I was somewhat reading it; I didn't have to force myself to read it, but I didn't care if I read it, I had no ‘need' to know what happened. If it had not been a group read and reasonably short, I would have stopped reading before I got halfway. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't really care about any of the characters apart from Singer and Biff, partly because of their selfishness regarding Singer, projecting their need onto him without caring about him for his own sake. I don't think it was simply that because even unlikeable characters can be compelling to read about, but not these. I did like the writing; I got a sense of each of the characters fairly quickly, some more than others, Dr Copeland in particular. This style of story does not grab me; I suppose I need a ‘quest' or similar to drive the story for me, even if that is used for social commentary. I recently read [b:Post Office 51504 Post Office Charles Bukowski http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347432080s/51504.jpg 823130] by [a:Charles Bukowski 13275 Charles Bukowski http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1361445522p2/13275.jpg] and I was reminded of it whilst reading that; I didn't particularly enjoy it either (2 stars again).

‘We read books to know we are not alone.'
-William Nicholson

I love this book and I love it's characters; a bunch of misfits in whom I glimpsed pieces of myself.

Beautifully written, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a story about alienation, about finding one's place in a world that seems to be made of a totally different material than one is made of, and about the longing for something, or someone, to make one feel listened to, feel seen, accepted, and loved.

It's a book you certainly have to come back to.

Carson McCullers is now on my radar and this will become one of my comfort books and one of my favourites.