School Book: The Meeting Point

I've just finished reading Austin Clarke's The Meeting Point for Canadian Prose, and my initial judgement of the book stands: it is not the best book that I have ever read, but it is also not the worst book.

The Meeting Point is a book about an immigrant from the Barbados, Bernice Leach, who has come to Canada around 1960. Bernice works in a rich Toronto Jewish household as their housekeeper, alternating between hating and loving both the master and mistress of the house Mr. and Mrs. Burrmann. Along the way, we meet Bernice's friend Dots, Dots' husband Boysie, Bernice's visiting sister Estelle, and a whole host of other very interesting characters.

The Meeting Point reminded me a bit of Sheila Watson's The Double Hook. The plots seemed rather similar in many ways (they are both novels about specific places, the way pregnancy comes up, etc), but The Meeting Point had a lot more description; the characters of Clarke's book were very unique individuals while those in Watson's book seemed to blend together. My major problem with The Meeting Point was that it was rather slow-paced. In a way, The Meeting Point reminded me of a movie I saw recently called Bangkok Dangerous; Bangkok Dangerous was one of the slowest-paced action movies that I have ever seen. Some normally exciting scenes, like a boat chase, were incredibly boring. That's how The Meeting Point felt; things that should have been interesting just weren't, and the book seemed to drag.

So as I said earlier, this wasn't the worst book I've ever read. Watson's The Double Hook and Wright's The Weekend Man from the summer were much worse than The Meeting Point. But neither was it the best book I've ever read. Rather, The Meeting Point was simply mediocre. It has some very interesting characters and a good ending, but it tends to drag a bit. Overall, I'd say that it is worth reading, but don't expect spectacular things from it.

School Book: Spud in Winter

Sorry, this image is from Amazon; you cannot look inside the book by clicking on it.

So another school book, once again from Contemporary Children's Lit. I read Spud in Winter by Brian Doyle over the last few days. I tried reading it a week or two back, but didn't get very far. So I started it again while I was away, reading the bulk of it while I was flying home, and finishing it earlier this afternoon.

Reading Spud in Winter reminded me of another book that I read earlier in the year before starting this blog, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. There wasn't a lot of dialogue. The story was told from the main character's perspective with waaaay too much detail. And as I found out from reading Richard Wright's The Weekend Man, I hate too much detail from someone's perspective with very little dialogue.

Luckily, Spud in Winter is a better story than those two books. But it wasn't terribly good. The book follows Spud Sweetgrass as he tries to protect those he loves. After having witnessed a murder and knowing who the culprit is, Spud has to decide whether to tell the cops, identifying himself as a witness (and possibly putting Connie Pan, his friend and love interest, into danger as well because she also knows the culprit), or to keep quiet and hope the whole thing blows over. Yes, it managed to tie everything up nicely in the end; but getting to the end was a bit brutal. The plot itself was rather boring. A lot of things that were described (like the Laneway Man) weren't terribly interesting to begin with, so when they were tied up at the end, I really didn't care. However, the characters were kind of interesting. Some of the things they said and did were kind of funny. And a lot of their names were great (who doesn't like B. Faroni?)

As far as books go, this one isn't really the greatest. There's humour in it from the characters, but not enough happening in the plot to keep you interested.

The Weekend Man

I started The Weekend Man by Richard B. Wright before I went to camp over the weekend. I've had it for quite awhile, having purchased it from the used book sale at work (the library) a few years ago. Reading the back, the book appealed to me; it is about a guy, Wes Wakeham, who is trying to figure out what he wants from life. I thought that that pretty much describes me at the moment, so I would give it a shot.

Well, I had to brute force my way through this book. The only reason I kept reading was that I wanted to see how it ended. It turns out that I really didn't care. The book buries you under mounds and mounds of description. There was barely any dialogue; what was present felt like it was thrown in because the author had to. The back of the book describes Wes as"a decent man with an ironic sense of humour." I found that I truly didn't care about or for him. He might be decent to those around him, but he generally wasn't very charitable to those around him in his own thoughts. (And of course, the reader gets to hear all about Wes Wakeham's thoughts on everything).

Save your money. Save your time. Don't bother with this one.