Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
Saves itself at the end. McCullers does lonely and unfulfilled promises better than anyone but here it comes perilously close to tipping over into ennui, a forgotten trombone v. a trombone solo at a jazz funeral. She rescues the ship in the last 30 pages but not before forgetting to bring strong characters and a vivid setting on board.
Worst of the 3 I've read but still McCullers, the genius. Will press on and read "Golden Eye" and "Sad Cafe."
Worst of the 3 I've read but still McCullers, the genius. Will press on and read "Golden Eye" and "Sad Cafe."
medium-paced
"It is the worst book I have ever read. It is incredible. If you want to read it, I will send it to you. It must signal the complete disintegration of this woman's talent. I have forgotten how the other three were, but they were at least respectable from the writing standpoint."— Flannery O'Connor
McCullers and O'Connor are easily the greatest female (and Southern Gothic) authors I have discovered—both being firmly in my top five all-time favorite authors. At times I think they are under-appreciated. Both have an incredibly intensified and peculiar sense of empathy that I can strongly identify and resonate with. In them there is a home that I rarely find in books, films, plays or actual people. This is the last of McCullers's novels that I could read and it feels like a sad goodbye, only her play now left to go.
This is the only McCullers novel (excluding short stories in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe) without any noteworthy female characters/perspectives/identities. This might be why O'Connor trashed the book, given that she normally writes entirely male POV narratives in a similar genre and she felt McCullers stepping into her territory. I personally think McCullers fares better at writing from the perspective of queer male and female characters (in comparison to herself and O'Connor) and from narratives which have more female characters. But still, I'm personally impressed with how much McCullers can realistically engage with complex emotional problems of troubled men, it takes a lot of human understanding and sympathy to craft some of these sentences.
This is how the world looked to a disillusioned man landing his plane:
From this height you do not see man and the details of his humiliation. The earth from a great distance is perfect and whole. But this is an order foreign to the heart, and to love the earth you must come closer. [...] From the air men are shrunken and they have an automatic look, like wound-up dolls. They seem to move mechanically among haphazard miseries. You do not see their eyes. And finally this is intolerable. The whole earth from a great distance means less than one long look into a pair of human eyes. Even the eyes of the enemy.
Unlike McCuller's other novels, I think there is a sociopolitical message here amongst the metaphysical musings. The 'Clock Without Hands' I feel refers to the idea that in general there is always a societal divide between a group of people in favour of traditional standards (turn back the hand of the clock) and another in favour of progressive change (turn forward the hand of the clock). I need not elaborate on how this might be relevant to the current political climate of the USA and UK and other countries at present. Progress for one is anarchy for another: societal progress per se is impossible when not all of its constituents agree on its definition, nor is any one definition guaranteed due to democratic vote. In this sense, the clock has no hands but those that we put upon it. McCullers does not seem to be arguing in favour of any one side, but that each person has a condition which they may well have been born into which makes them feel like their side is the right side, to the point of committing needless violence or martyrdom. The idea that societal progress can be neither defined or guaranteed can fill one with the same sense of dread and futility as not knowing when one's time of death will be, which is the main concern of the central characters.
Trying to keep this review relatively short, in all, this book is similar but less well-rounded than To Kill A Mockingbird. It feels incomplete and unbalanced as a narrative—easily not McCuller's finest in my eyes—but it raises similar sentiments than To Kill A Mockingbird, though being a stronger study of character than a criticism of the sadly still pertinent societal issues with race and gender.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read combined review here: Complete Novels of Carson McCullers
Het is goed geschreven, dat staat buiten kijf, maar het plot liet zoveel te wensen over. Ik heb sowieso een beetje moeite met witte vrouwen die schrijven over rassenproblematiek vanuit een wit narratief, omdat het racistische gedachtegoed van de personages dan wel wordt weergegeven, maar verdere consequenties uitblijven. Dat stoorde me. Buiten dat was er een homo-erotisch subplot, tussen een witte jongen uit een welgestelde familie en een zwarte jongen die ooit ten vondeling is gelegd in de kerkbanken van het dorpje waar ze allebei wonen - dat had mijn aandacht, vooral omdat het verhaal zich afspeelt in het zuiden van Amerika in 1953 -, maar telkens wanneer het erop aankwam, telkens wanneer ik dacht: 'oké, nú!', werd de spanning niet doorgetrokken, maar abrupt afgekapt. Ook dat stoorde me. Oneindig jammer.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
All Sherman's life he had thought that all white men were crazy, and the more prominent their positions the more lunatic were their words and behaviour. In this matter, Sherman considered he had the sober ice-cold truth on his side. The politicians, from governors to congressmen, down to sheriffs and wardens, were alike in their bigotry and violence. Sherman brooded over every lynching, bombing or indignity that his race had suffered. In this Sherman had the vulnerability and sensitivity of an adolescent. Drawn to brooding on atrocities, he felt that every evil was reserved for him personally. So he lived in a stasis of dread and suspense.
I fell in love with Carson McCullers when I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a few years ago, and she equally stunned me with her novel The Member of the Wedding. However, I wasn't massively impressed when I read her short story collection The Ballad of the Sad Cafe last year, so I did have a handful of apprehensions when picking this book up.
Clock Without Hands follows four men - Malone, a pharmacist who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia, Fox Clane, an elderly judge, Jester, the Judge's grandson, and Sherman Pew, a young black man with blue eyes who was abandoned as a child in a church pew. The novel looks at how their stories intertwine with one another and how, blighted by ignorance, they inflict harm on one another, be it in the form of cutting words or searing bigotry.
The quote on the back of my edition is from the playwright, Tennessee Williams, who writes: "She (McCullers) has examined the heart of man with an understanding that no other writer can hope to surpass", which encapsulates my feelings perfectly. McCullers understands how people work and she somehow depicts the innermost workings of the human heart and mind in such a truthful, utterly real way. She allows her characters to be ugly, permits them to commit terrible acts and yet you never feel that she is outright condemning them. She lets her readers see the ruin within these people, the way they are battered and bruised, but she never does this in order to cleanse or redeem them. She just writes honestly and it's hard not to give your heart over to her stories.
Carson McCullers reached into my chest and bruised my heart and I am 100% thankful to her for that. She was such a beautiful writer and I don't think anyone can do what she does...McCullers was a true talent.
I fell in love with Carson McCullers when I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a few years ago, and she equally stunned me with her novel The Member of the Wedding. However, I wasn't massively impressed when I read her short story collection The Ballad of the Sad Cafe last year, so I did have a handful of apprehensions when picking this book up.
Clock Without Hands follows four men - Malone, a pharmacist who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia, Fox Clane, an elderly judge, Jester, the Judge's grandson, and Sherman Pew, a young black man with blue eyes who was abandoned as a child in a church pew. The novel looks at how their stories intertwine with one another and how, blighted by ignorance, they inflict harm on one another, be it in the form of cutting words or searing bigotry.
The quote on the back of my edition is from the playwright, Tennessee Williams, who writes: "She (McCullers) has examined the heart of man with an understanding that no other writer can hope to surpass", which encapsulates my feelings perfectly. McCullers understands how people work and she somehow depicts the innermost workings of the human heart and mind in such a truthful, utterly real way. She allows her characters to be ugly, permits them to commit terrible acts and yet you never feel that she is outright condemning them. She lets her readers see the ruin within these people, the way they are battered and bruised, but she never does this in order to cleanse or redeem them. She just writes honestly and it's hard not to give your heart over to her stories.
Carson McCullers reached into my chest and bruised my heart and I am 100% thankful to her for that. She was such a beautiful writer and I don't think anyone can do what she does...McCullers was a true talent.
Took this from the library on a whim since I've liked the couple other books of Carson McCullers' I've read and I think this was my favorite. The writing was so concise and direct, creating vivid characters with rich inner lives. There were different povs and no matter which one I was in I was involved. Even if I liked some characters more than others they were all equally compelling.
Sherman Pew, in particular, was something special. I felt like if this book had a fandom Sherman would be king, he's so funny and dramatic and tragic. I don't want to reduce the book to shipping but I couldn't help ship Jester/Sherman.
Sherman Pew, in particular, was something special. I felt like if this book had a fandom Sherman would be king, he's so funny and dramatic and tragic. I don't want to reduce the book to shipping but I couldn't help ship Jester/Sherman.
Not quite as good as "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" (will anything ever be?), but still features some of my favorite things about McCullers' writing: spectacularly vivid and beautiful language, southern gothic, important topics, and death (the way she writes about death is astounding).