Judith Hearne, a Catholic middle-aged spinster, moves into yet another bed-sit in Belfast. A socially isolated woman of modest means, she teaches piano to a handful of students to pass the day. Her only social activity is tea with the O'Neill family, who secretly dread her weekly visits.

After finishing the wonderful [b:Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine|31434883|Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine|Gail Honeyman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493724347s/31434883.jpg|47327681][bc:Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine|31434883|Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine|Gail Honeyman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493724347s/31434883.jpg|47327681]which also deals with similar themes albeit on a much more humorous level I wanted to revisit Judith Herne as I had enjoyed it so much first time around.

I really enjoyed this extraordinary novel and found it a thought provoking insight into loneliness and what it means to be ALONE.

This Novel was one of the recommendations from Good Reads and I have to be honest I had never heard of Brian Moore until I purchased this book. First published in 1955 this novel is a real classic and I can see why Mr Moore was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is an unflinching and deeply sympathetic portrait of a woman destroyed by self and circumstance. Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in society. She has few skills and is full of the prejudices and pieties of her genteel Belfast upbringing. But Judith has a secret life. And she is just one heartbreak away from revealing it to the world.

I was blown away by the writing in this novel as it is so rich in imagery and detail and the pacing is perfect. This is quite a small novel but Mr Moore makes every word count and not only do you get a feel for the characters you really are a fly on the wall of the Bed Sit with Judith Hearne.

I found myself immersed in the characters and could not put this book down.
I believe this book has been made into a film starring Maggie Smith(Downton Abbey)and Bob Hoskins and I really would love to see that.

I found this read a true 5 star experience. ( )

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. ( )

Other reviewers here have mentioned that "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" is an extremely sad book, and they're hardly wrong to say so. What I really enjoyed about this book, though, was that Judy -- though she herself might not appreciate our overly familiar tone -- is that she isn't merely the victim of a cold, unwelcoming world. Yes, the author portrays Belfast as a small, rather boring place riven by social divisions, and Ms. Hearne herself is the product of an idea of upper-class femininity that was, as of the fifties, was rapidly becoming outmoded. Her ladies' education hasn't gotten her too far in life. While forgoing marriage to take care of an ailing aunt turns out to be a disastrous choice, the author is understanding enough of his protagonist to make clear that there were few good options available to Judy's only close relation. Even so, Ms. Hearne herself has her faults. She's inherited the biases natural to her class and refused to examine them. She seems stuck in mental and emotional patterns that she's either unwilling or unable to break. She daydreams but refuses to act. You can call the characters in this novel who find her dull or faintly ridiculous unkind, but they're handly wrong. Judy, and her life, are terribly boring, and she doesn't really do enough to change it. Predictably enough, things end badly.

Mary Gordon suggests that "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" was written, as was much of the Irish literature of this period, under the star of Joyce, and while there is the stray free-flowing description here along with a few thematic similarities, I think that Moore's novel is really an altogether different sort of creature. His prose here is economical, almost cutting: a far cry from Jim's more lyrical moods. Lovers of period slang will enjoy returned Yankified returned Irishman James Madden's New York dialect, which is rendered so perfectly it often seems like he just stepped out of a film noir. His own truncated, spectacularly unsuccessful courtship of the titular character is, by way of closing, another one of this novel's principal attractions. Less a folie a deux than a dramatic mismatch of mercenary personal interests, it provides the perfect opportunity for the author to demonstrate what can happen when you remain trapped in your own badly calibrated perceptions. A rom-com in reverse, Judy and Jim's attempt at a love affair ends badly, too. It's not for the clinically depressed or the unshakably optimistic, but this one's a very good novel nonetheless. ( )

The kind of quietly devastating book that you finish and then need to just sit and stare at a blank wall for a moment while saying "oof" softly to yourself. Brian Moore's portrait of the chronically lonely Judith Hearne, a 40-something spinster clinging desperately to her fading gentility in 1950s Belfast is a well-observed one: a bleak look at woman imprisoning herself in a grisaille world. ( )

This book is at times darkly humorous, and other times so damn sad I could hardly believe I was interested. Depressing books that are depressing for no good reason, I hate. But this, this book presented a character with whom I had nearly nothing in common and, despite that, I felt for her, I loved her, even though I knew she was hopeless. Even when I found her mishaps excruciatingly sad and humiliating. It's hard to put into words how this book immerses you without completely draining you. It has something to do with the richness of each character (especially Ms. Hearne, of course) and the depth and detail and personality of the story telling. You definitely become part of Judith Hearne's world, every bit of it. You practically feel like a gossipy citizen of the small Irish town by the time you're through.

With that said, I'm going to quote the best damn review of this book that ever existed (by Goodreads member Hannah Messler):

"Oh sweet lord if there is a more excruciatingly, exquisitely, exactingly, deliriously wretched little book out there, I don't think I could even handle it.

What an absolute motherfucking masterpiece."
( )