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.

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