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Clock without hands

Carson McCullers

1961207 pagesabout 3–5 hours
1961
first published
  • 1961Houghton Mifflin · 241 pages · ENG
  • 1961Cresset Press · 262 pages · ENG
  • 1965Penguin · 208 pages · ENGISBN 9780140023176
  • 1986Penguin · 207 pages · ENGISBN 9780140083583
  • 1998Houghton Mifflin · 241 pages · ENGISBN 9780395929735

Set in Georgia on the eve of court-ordered integration, Clock Without Hands contains McCullers's most poignant statement on race, class, and justice. A small-town druggist dying of leukemia calls himself and his community to account in this tale of change and changelessness, of death and the death-in-life that is hate. It is a tale, as McCullers herself wrote, of "response and responsibility--of man toward his own livingness."

How it feels

Emotional toneUnflinching

How it reads

Plot intensityCharacter driven
ComplexityLayered

Content notes

  • Racismmoderateunreviewed
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