The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Book excerpt: 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