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

Residents of a small town seek answers to their loneliness and isolation.

Classics Review: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter not only has one of the best titles ever, but has an observational intelligence that exposes a rarely seen level of humanity. The story centers around five lonely people. A "deaf-mute" who loses his good friend; a black doctor estranged from his family who believes that socialism can save the black race; a young girl who wants to be a pianist (a quite similar character to Frankie in McCullers' The Member of the Wedding); a bar owner who has lost his wife and now doesn't know who he is; and a populist vagabond whose anger issues prevent him from success. The latter four lonely people find their answers in a deaf-mute who in his uncanny silence reflects their hopes and aspirations back to them, just as he thought he found the answer to his own loneliness in another deaf-mute who reflected himself back to him. Carson McCullers (1917-1967) shows that people need their pipe dreams and illusions, and cannot live without them. But there's an overlooked but key counterbalance in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to the four people who seek salvation in the Christ-like deaf-mute. That alternative heart and soul is a family cook, Portia, a black woman who creates her own support and resources within her own family. That family is battered and maimed by an unjust system, a life inevitably stacked against them, but they continue to help each other, save each other, lift each other up. McCullers believes that the salvation from the world's loneliness and isolation is the family love curated by Portia. At the end the young girl finds herself balanced on the knife edge between a hopeless working life in a dime store and her dreams of a life in the exhilaration of music. Richard Wright noted of this book: "The most impressive aspect ... is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer for the first time ... to handle [black] characters with as much ease and grace as those of her own race ... an attitude toward life which enables Miss McCullers to ... embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." Every character in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is presented with awe-inspiring compassion and sensitivity, is suffused with a humanity few authors attain. A heart-breaking moment is when two characters with the same beliefs can't find common ground or a way to support each other. This was Carson McCullers' first novel, written when she was 22. There are a few flaws in this almost perfect work, which might be expected in a first novel: McCullers has to make sure every subtle point is clearly signaled and some of the didactic moments about socialism go on too long. But I love this book and I love Carson McCullers.  [4½★]