The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne was the book that made Brian Moore’s literary reputation and established him as an unflinching chronicler of the human soul. Moore’s deep sympathy and immense skill make this story of an ordinary woman confronting the limitations of her life an unforgettable one. Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in the world. She scrapes by with an annuity left to her by the aunt she spent her youth nursing and the earnings from a few piano lessons. She’s full of the prejudices and piousness of her genteel Belfast upbringing, so it is with some reluctance that she accepts the attentions of her landlady’s brother, a former doorman, lately returned from America. But Judith has a secret life, one nobody suspects until circumstances force her to loosen her grasp on respectability in a spectacular act of self-destruction.