School Book: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

I had to read Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for the class I TA for this term. I knew before I started it that it wouldn't be my kind of book, and I was right. If anything, it reminded me of Shelia Watson's The Double Hook; like it, this book really wasn't about the story. But unlike Watson's book, By Grand Central Station used quotation marks.

By Grand Central Station is about the author's love affair with a man. Unfortunately, that man is married. And the book does not tell the story so much as chronicle the author's emotions throughout the love affair. It was really tough to figure out just what exactly was going on as the book progressed. And me being me, I like a good story; that this lacked a real story meant that I really didn't enjoy reading it. Luckily, like The Double Hook, By Grand Central Station was also really short, so I was able to finish it quickly. I'll be able to move onto better, story-focussed things tomorrow.

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: The Double Hook

Shelia Watson's The Double Hook is the first book on the reading list for Canadian Prose. We're going to be looking at it over the next week and a half, so I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. Luckily The Double Hook is a small book, so I knew I'd be able to finish it quickly and move onto better things (like The DaVinci Code!)

The Double Hook is a strange book. When I first started reading it, it reminded me of A Million Little Pieces; Watson does not use quotation marks for dialogue. But The Double Hook is written better than A Million Little Pieces. The lack of quotation marks is not distracting at all; you can easily keep up with the story.

But the story itself wasn't that spectacular. The Double Hook is about a small community of only about 20 people. A woman has died and people keep seeing her fishing. There's this one guy named Kip whom everyone seems to hate for no reason. Yes, the book might have been well written. But the story was hard to follow, and things seemed to happen for no reason at all. If it weren't for my Canadian Prose class, I would never have picked up The Double Hook. And I don't think my life would have suffered at all for the lack of reading this book.