I don’t remember who originally told me about The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) by Brian Moore, but that recommendation was enough for me to buy it in 2012. A few people read it for the 1955 Club a little while ago, and I’d read so many positive reviews that I finally read it. Yes, it’s rather brilliant! (By the way, I’ve included a copy of the NYRB Classics edition because it’s beautiful; mine was a film tie-in, with Maggie Smith on the cover, and it was made me want to seek out the film…)
Here are the first couple of paragraphs, to whet your appetite:
The first thing Miss Judith Hearne unpacked in her new lodgings was the silver-framed photograph of her aunt. The place for her aunt, ever since the sad day of the funeral, was on the mantelpiece of whatever bed-sitting-room Miss Hearne happened to be living in. And as she put her up now, the photograph eyes were stern and questioning, sharing Miss Hearne’s own misgivings about the condition of the bed-springs, the shabbiness of the furniture and the run-down part of Belfast in which the room was situated.
After she had arranged the photograph so that her dear aunt could look at her from the exact centre of the mantelpiece, Miss Hearne unwrapped the white tissue paper which covered the coloured oleograph of the Sacred Heart. His place was at the head of the bed, His fingers raised in benediction. His eyes kindly yet accusing. He was old and the painted halo around His head was beginning to show little cracks. He had looked down on Miss Hearne for a long time, almost half her lifetime.
Judith Hearne is settling into a boarding house, uncertain about how she will be perceived and how she will fit in. These two pictures sum up her life – a devoted Catholic faith, and a longing for any sort of family. But she has her pride, and – on a quest for a hammer, to put in a nail for her oleograph – she is reluctant to jump straight into a friendship with her talkative landlady and the landlady’s overgrown, ugly adult son. But she is rather taken by the landlady’s brother, James Madden – an Irishman who has recently returned from many decades in the US, possibly returning wealthy.
The other friendships she has outside the house are with Moira and her various children – all of whom mock her behind her back, and see the weekly cup of tea as a chore that they can take in turns. These scenes encapsulate what Moore does so very well – showing us the pain that comes not only from Judith Hearne’s loneliness but from her self-awareness. She knows that the family are tired of her, and she notices when they exchange glances at her comments. With James Madden, she has immediate, desperate visions of them falling in love and marrying – but she is no fantasist. She knows her visions are fake, and can’t happen. There is no escape for her in fantasy.
I’ll read more or less anything set in a boarding house, and Moore is brilliant at the enclosure of it – the proximity of strangers and the factions that develop between them. This proximity is even the reason for a rape scene that is very troubling, and I don’t think would be written in quite the same way today – it is written as a terrible crime, but there is little aftermath.
What Moore is best at is developing the portrait of Judith Hearne – her desperation, her melancholy, her stupidity, her hopes and the ways in which she protects them from the eyes of others. Her crisis of faith is dealt with sensitively and without the sneer of the cynic. She is a complete and miserable character, whose life could have been far more complete – but who, one suspects, would always have managed to spoil things, or to let the fly in the ointment overwhelm and destroy her. It is impossible not to feel for her; it is impossible not to realise that she is her own worst enemy.
All this Moore achieves through superlative writing. It reminded me a lot of Patrick Hamilton in its vitality, though perhaps without the dry wit – here is more the humour of hysteria, albeit subdued hysteria. I’m so glad I finally read it – and I hope his other novels are as good.
Sheila Redden has come to France to celebrate her anniversary with Kevin, the doctor of the title. She has come ahead of him, as he has been caught up with work – and they’ve returned to the place where they had their honeymoon fifteen years earlier. Before heading to the very same hotel in Villefranche, she is spending a short time in Paris, visiting an old friend and her current boyfriend. Her life is painfully ordinary. She loves her teenage son Danny, though not all-encompassingly. She supposes herself to love her husband and her life, because that is what one does. Sheila is an introspective woman who manages to avoid looking too close.
