Finished: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (McCullers). A really good book! It definitely deserves its spot on the Top 100 list! This was a book that I wanted to finish but savor at the same time. The characters were so real, and came right off the page. I don't think I'll forget any of them for a long, long time....especially John Singer, Mick Kelly and Dr. Copeland. The writing was similar, to me, of Lee Harper's writing in To Kill a Mockingbird, which I also loved. It was so authentic and displayed the main characters feelings and hearts in such a moving way. The book is set in a small Georgia mill town in the 1930's, where race relations are definitely strained, and poverty is rampant among the whites and the blacks. John Singer is a 32 year old white deaf/mute who has been with his one friend, the obese and gluttonous Greek, Antonapoulos, for 10 years. They've lived together, walked to work together, spent meals together...but they are always just identified as friends, best friends. Whether or not their feelings were more than that, is never spelled out. When Antonapoulos is committed to a mental institution by his brother 200 miles away from their town for bizarre behavior, John Singer is totally lost. He packs up his belongings and moves into a boarding house run by the white Kelly family. The Kelly's, with their six children, barely make ends meet. Their 13 year old daughter, Mick, is the central character of that family. We hear her thoughts and feel her feelings. She usually takes care of her two younger brothers, and she's rather tomboyish. She also loves music! She is enthralled by music, more like it. She listens for hours to symphonies being performed outside the windows of the "rich" people of the town who have radios. Mick becomes fascinated with Mr. Singer, as do three other central characters. Mr. Singer can read lips, and he is so calm and understanding. He actually becomes the listener for all these characters. They poor out their hearts to him and each one of them feels as if they have a special, unique relationship with him...that he totally "gets" them. Mr. Singer, though, while he sympathizes with each character, basically has only thoughts of his friendship with Antonapoulos and waits for the days when he will get to see him again. He cares for the other characters, but in a more peripheral way. He still considers himself to have only one true friend, even though each of these people practically worship him and have come to count on his presence in their lives. Mick tells him about her love for music while he lets her listen to his radio. She just knows that he understands her more than anyone. Dr. Copeland, a black doctor who is run ragged in the town trying to take care of the black population, thinks Mr. Singer is the only man he's ever met who can understand the plight his people are going through, i.e., he feels he's the only decent white man alive. Biff Brannon, the all-night cafe owner, is more of a listener himself, but he comes to count on watching the relationships that these people develop with Mr. Singer, and a few times himself, he goes to talk to him. Jake Blount is a white, alcoholic, rabble-rouser. I'm not sure what to call him actually. He has very strong views about the oppression of ALL Americans by the rich and by the government. He is driven by the need to inform people how America has become so unfair to most of the population. He and Dr. Copeland actually have an all night conversation towards the end of the book, where they realize their feelings are pretty similar...however, Dr. Copeland wants to view it only in terms of how the black people are oppressed, while Jake wants to view it as how the entire nation is oppressed. They can never come to a solution as to how to resolve things. Dr. Copeland is a bitterly disappointed man whose own four children never understood his desire to have them make more of themselves than just being a white man's servant. They were all capable, but none succeeded, because none of them truly had that burning desire in their hearts like he did.

In essence, we have all these lonely, solitary people with deep feelings who have no one who understands them...until they meet John Singer. It is so sad that each one thinks they've met their soul-mate in terms of understanding, when in reality John Singer is just a nice guy who "listens", but doesn't totally understand what each of them is really saying. He knows he's important to them, and he's a super nice person, but his heartbeat lies 200 miles away with Antonapoulos. Mr. Singer goes to visit Antonapoulos, who is pretty self-centered, but I suppose mentally ill, three times. The first time, Antonapoulos is pretty disappointed that John Singer doesn't bring food. The second time, Mr. Singer panics when Antonapoulos isn't in his room anymore. It is Christmas time and he's brought presents and food. The desk clerk informs him that Antonapoulos has been moved to the infirmary due to nephritis. They spend a lovely evening together before Mr. Singer has to head back. The third time he goes to visit, he begins in the infirmary and doesn't find Antonapoulos there OR in his room. The desk clerk writes on a piece of paper that Antonapoulos is dead. Mr. Singer is beside himself. He wanders the town in despair before heading back to his own town where he takes a gun and kills himself. It is so, so sad. None of the four: Mick, Jake, Dr. Copeland or Biff can understand at all why Mr. Singer would have taken his own life. None of them really knew anything about him at all. I guess they were always so busy talking and unburdening their own hearts that no one ever asked him about himself. A heartbreaking end to a really good story....a story that will stay with me for awhile and go in my favorites list I'm pretty sure. Definitely John Singer will go in my Favorite Characters list.

A sample of just one of the passages that I liked. John Singer has been alone for a year and he's thinking back on alot of the selfish things that Antonapoulos used to do. However, he resolves to think of only the good times with his friend. Mr. Singer then also contemplates the other people who have come into his life:

    This was the Antonapoulos who now was always in his thoughts. This was the friend to whom he wanted to tell things that had come about. For something had happened in this year. He had been left in an alien land. Alone. He had opened his eyes and around him there was much he could not understand. He was bewildered.

    He watched the words shape on their lips.
    We Negroes want a chance to be free at least. And freedom is only the right to contribute. We want to serve and to share, to labor and in turn consume that which is due to us. But you are the only white man I have ever encountered who realizes this terrible need of my people.
    You see, Mister Singer? I got this music in me all the time. I got to be a real musician. Maybe I don't know anything now, but I will when I'm twenty. See, Mister Singer? And then I mean to travel in a foreign country where there's snow.
    Let's finish up the bottle. I want a small one. For we were thinking of freedom. That's the word like a worm in my brain. Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We'll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all the words this is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good--in fact the word is a great ideal. But it's with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us.
    The last one rubbed his nose. He did not come often and he did not say much. He asked questions. 
    The four people had been coming to his rooms now for more than seven months.....
    At first he had not understood the four people at all. They talked and they talked--and as the months went on they talked more and more. He became so used to their lips that he understood each word they said. And then after a while he knew what each one of them would say before he began, because the meaning was always the same.