Century of Books

My project to read the top 100 English-language books of the twentieth century.

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Location: San Francisco, United States

I am an Australian writer and blogger living in San Francisco. Visit my professional site at caitlinfitzsimmons.com, or my travel and food blog at Roaming Tales or my personal blog at The Niltiac Files. I am also on Twitter as @niltiac. See the full list of books or visit me on BookCrossing.

09 July 2006

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

This is a beautiful, haunting book about loneliness and the human condition. It is set in a small town in the American South in the 1930s and follows the interwined lives of five people: Singer the mute; Mick Kelly, the young girl with a passion for music; Dr Copeland, the Negro doctor; Jake Blount, the troubled revolutionary; and Biff Brannon, the cafe owner. It's true that not much happens in terms of plot - the inner lives of the characters, all misfits of some kind, provide all the action. The book explores isolation and the quest for self fulfilment and how each person's loneliness manifests itself in different ways.

I hadn't heard of this book before I started researching for this list but I'm so glad I have had the opportunity to read it. It's amazing to think that the author wrote this, her first book, when she as just twenty three!

This is a BookCrossing copy - you can read all journal entries here.

33 down, 67 to go ...

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