<i>The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne</i> was the book that made Brian Moore&rsquo;s literary reputation and established him as an unflinching chronicler of the human soul. Moore&rsquo;s deep sympathy and immense skill make this story of an ordinary woman confronting the limitations of her life an unforgettable one. Judith Hearne is an unmarried woman of a certain age who has come down in the world. She scrapes by with an annuity left to her by the aunt she spent her youth nursing and the earnings from a few piano lessons. She&rsquo;s full of the prejudices and piousness of her genteel Belfast upbringing, so it is with some reluctance that she accepts the attentions of her landlady&rsquo;s brother, a former doorman, lately returned from America. But Judith has a secret life, one nobody suspects until circumstances force her to loosen her grasp on respectability in a spectacular act of self-destruction.