Name: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
ISBN: 9780007405909

Brian Moore

A timeless classic dealing with the complexity and hardships of relationships, addiction and faith.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is an unflinching and deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman destroyed by self and circumstance. First published in 1955, it marked Brian Moore as a major figure in English literature (he would go on to be short-listed three times for the Booker Prize) and established him as an astute chronicler of the human soul. Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in society. She has few skills and is full of the prejudices and pieties of her genteel Belfast upbringing. But Judith has a secret life. And she is just one heartbreak away from revealing it to the world.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Trever

This, like  The Heart of the Matter, moves slow and then really fast and gets really good, i.e., really depressing. I won't spoil the plot, but here there were echoes of Joyce and Graham Greene and it reminded me a bit of a book that was written a few years later in another language,  The Hour of the Star (though I doubt Lispector read this book); but Moore has a distinct voice in this combination.

First published in London in 1955 under title: Judith Hearne.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

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