Carson McCullers: A Life

Mary V. Dearborn's biography draws on newly surfaced letters and journals to illuminate one of American literature's most singular figures. Carson McCullers grew up in Columbus, Georgia, dreaming of a concert career before her fiction announced a writer of startling originality. At twenty-three, she published "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" and became overnight literary sensation. Dearborn traces the full arc of that remarkable life: the turbulent twelve-year marriage to Reeves McCullers, the passionate and often unrequited attachments to women, the chronic illness that shadowed her middle years, and the creative force that produced a body of work celebrated by Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and generations of readers since.

Barrie Kreinik brings measured intelligence to the narration, letting the complexity of McCullers's character emerge without editorializing. The 15-hour runtime suits a life this layered, and Kreinik handles the shifts between literary criticism and intimate biography with natural ease. Biography about writers often benefits from audio, where the cadences of a narrator's voice echo the subject's own relationship to language, and that dynamic holds here.