Mick, the young girl who for me is the heart of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, has a passion for music, which she sees and smells as much as hears. See the review of this bestellar, with more touching quotations on how she hears music.

‘In her mind she could remember about six different tunes from the pieces of his she had heard.  A few of them were kind of quick and tinkling, and another was like that smell in the springtime after a rain. But they all made her somehow sad and excited at the same time.’

Source: Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008 (1940)), p. 37