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A review by milesjmoran
Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers
5.0
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.