A review by margaret21
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

4.0

This is a raw, powerful account of a lonely life. In Judith we have a middle-aged woman in straitened circumstances, who lost her youth to caring for an aged and difficult aunt. Once her aunt died, she had rather missed the boat. A career, the prospect of marriage have all vanished, together with her confidence. She moves from boarding house to boarding house, and teaches a few - a very few - hours of piano. Her only social life is to visit the O'Neill family on Sunday, after Mass. And they dread those visits. This is the story of her disintegration. Inept at reading social clues, she imagines a fellow resident at her current boarding house is interested in marrying her. He isn't. And things go from bad to worse ...

It's excruciating. It's depressing. It's sad. But it's compelling too. Here's a man who remembers the torments that most of us go through as teenagers, re-enacted in the mind of a middle-aged woman. Somehow, Brian Moore has passed me by till now. No longer.