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Browsing in a bookshop, Elizabeth Smart chanced upon a book of poems that would change her life. Falling in love first with the poetry of George Barker, Smart eventually sought out the poet himself and paid to relocate and house the impecunious poet and his wife. That's right, and his wife. Both hostess and mistress, Smart had four children with Barker during the affair that prompted this searing, exquisite examination of desire and identity.
Amazingly, By Grand is as passionate on the page as the events that inspired it. Aching and unapologetic, By Grand is the diary of an affair, not a marriage, and its tug of war between terror and desire is constant. Smart is simultaneously character, author, and lover, confessing guilt one moment while sparing nothing of her bliss the next: "Under the waterfall he surprised me bathing and gave me what I could no more refuse than the earth can refuse the rain." Emboldened by its honesty and intensity, By Grand wrests its unique place in the literature of love with pitch-perfect language that ranges from the sweeping to the needle precise. Toppling over into love, Smart knows, "Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour." --Darryl Whetter
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Okay, okay, so it's a bit overwrought,,
By
This review is from: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Paperback)
And some (cynics, prudes, realists; people who like their brilliance consistent & unmarred) may find the prose so purple as to warrant UV-protection. And, of course, they're right -- up to a point. For there's certainly no shortage of examples they can cite to send up its extravagance ("When my eyes float around the room like two ships lost on the sea, I know the exact measurements of my captivity.").But in this (admittedly) florid little book are moments of such delirious intensity! Here is Love's catalogue, all of its wild oscillations (desire & more desire, plenitude & lack, the ecstasy of self-transcendence and the terror of self-dissolution), and turns of phrase to turn your head around: "I am over-run, jungled in my bed, I am infested with a menagerie of desires..." Or this: "There is no room for pity, of anything. In a bleeding heart I should find only exhilaration in the richness of the red." "By Grand Central..." reads not like the diary of an affair calmly recollected and retold (intensely autobiographical, the book has its origins in the real-life love affair between Smart and poet George Barker) but rather one howled and sung by nerve-endings still raw from love-rub. And if your ears can withstand the howls, the song -- at times -- rises up into registers of beauty you've never heard before. And for everyone else? There's always Hemingway.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Depressing? Not quite...,
By "matsya" (Calgary, AB CANADA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Paperback)
This is a beautifully brilliant book -- more of an extended prose poem than a novella. While we flow along with Smart on the torrents of this not-quite-unrequited relationship with poet Barker, we learn that although love may be wrenching, it is certainly worth it, hence the expression: it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Smart expresses that it worth it to be passionate about love and to live life in love with everything. It may be painful at times, but the pleasure can be excruciatingly beautiful. In Smart's own words are words to live by: "Love all things in all ways, but never less than total." Reading Grand Central is to experience the anguish and the splendor of a love relationship.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Desperation of Love,
By James Marland (Sydney, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Paperback)
Never before have I read a book that captures the desperation of love so eloquently. Elizabeth Smart is able to avoke such vivid images of pain that this novel left me breathless. The whole book is one major work of lyrical prose put together so magnificently that I simply had to read the whole thing out loud.
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