3.5
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
ByPublisher Description
One of The Guardian’s “1,000 Books to Read Before You Die”
This underrated classic of contemporary Irish literature tells the “utterly transfixing” story of a lonely, poverty-stricken spinster in 1950s Belfast (The Boston Globe)
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.
Hailed by Graham Greene, Thomas Flanagan, and Harper Lee alike, 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.
“Seldom in modern fiction has any character been revealed so completely or been made to seem so poignantly real.” —The New York Times
This underrated classic of contemporary Irish literature tells the “utterly transfixing” story of a lonely, poverty-stricken spinster in 1950s Belfast (The Boston Globe)
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.
Hailed by Graham Greene, Thomas Flanagan, and Harper Lee alike, 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.
“Seldom in modern fiction has any character been revealed so completely or been made to seem so poignantly real.” —The New York Times
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne Reviews
3.5
“5 ★ Reading this one, I really felt for Judy. She doesn't know where her life is headed (but really doesn't like what she does see in her future–drinking in excess, no family of her own, no career...) and she copes by drinking even more. Of course she tops it all off by questioning her faith. And no one, not even the priest, has answers for her that can soothe her. I also feel at a certain point she's less inclined to believe in God so she doesn't feel guilty about her drinking. She feels the heat of God's shame about it, above all else, up until she starts questioning her faith. Then this leads her to drink more and not even care about how others might perceive her, though this was her prime concern for pages!
I really liked how the book starts and ends the same way–with a new room, setting up her "trinity" (photo of her Aunt, the sacred heart, and her little button shoes). I think this speaks to the cyclical nature of her problems. It's happened before and will happen again! I love Moore's writing and how he slowly reveals details of the story. By page ~160, you are finally looking at the *full* picture of Judy and why she's lonely. It feels so satisfying when it all clicks into place.
Speaking of the little shoe buttons, I feel this repeating symbol and the phrase, "little shoe-eyes, always there" represents her loneliness. The only 'person' truly, always there–her shoes!!! The only eyes to look into! So sad.”“This is one of the saddest books I've ever read. Of course, I've read sad books before, even books that have made me cry, but nothing which has left me with such an overwhelming sense of pity for the main protagonist, Miss Hearne.
Miss Hearne is a middle-aged Catholic spinster, living in Belfast, Ireland, having spent the "best years of her life" caring for her sick aunt.
She is an alcoholic who is extremely lonely and only has one friend whose family she visits every Sunday for tea. They dread her visit and seem to endure this because they feel sorry for her.
She meets Mr Madden, the brother of her landlady recently returned from America and who takes an interest in her because she listens to him dronning on about stories of America and also because he thinks she may have some money to invest in a business venture as partner with him in Dublin.
He takes her out a couple of times, and she begins to hope that he might be interested in her and daydreams about him wanting to marry her. When she understands he's not interested, she turns to drink, and this results in a tragic downward spiral of drink and desperate depression.
This story is set in the 1950s, where an unsympathetic Catholic Church plays a part in making her feel ashamed of her weakness, which fills her with guilt, and eventually, she loses her faith. It's just so terribly tragic.”
About Brian Moore
Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, I Am Mary Dunne,Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, Color of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collectionwon the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
Mary Gordon is the author of the novels Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, Final Payments,The Other Side, and Pearl; the short story collections Temporary Shelterand The Stories of Mary Gordon; and the memoir The Shadow Man. She has received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1997 O. Henry Award for best story. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.
Mary Gordon is the author of the novels Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, Final Payments,The Other Side, and Pearl; the short story collections Temporary Shelterand The Stories of Mary Gordon; and the memoir The Shadow Man. She has received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1997 O. Henry Award for best story. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.
Other books by Brian Moore
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