MJ Nicholls's Reviews > Clock Without Hands

One of America’s most remarkable writers concluded her career with her second-best work, having never quite reached the towering tippermost of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter again across her painfully short period of livingness. Set in Georgia in the 1950s, in the last gasp of segregation, Clock Without Hands humanises an ex-KKK judge, an egocentric yet amiable octogenarian besotted with his definitely gay grandson, completely oblivious to the poisonousness of his own vile racism. Whether you find the characters unlikely (as in the case of Sherman Pew), or somewhat wooden (the dying J.T. Malone), McCullers’s insights into the twiny muck of humanity are as powerful as in her other works, making this an underrated and compelling swansong.