The Double Hook (New Canadian Library)
List Price:
$17.95
Price: $14.00
You Save: $3.95 (22%)
Description
In spare, allusive prose, Sheila Watson charts the destiny of a small, tightly knit community nestled in the BC Interior. Here, among the hills of Cariboo country, men and women are caught upon the double hook of existence, unaware that the flight from danger and the search for glory are both part of the same journey. In Watson’s compelling novel, cruelty and kindness, betrayal and faith shape a pattern of enduring significance.
Customer Reviews
Students! wanna understand this book?
I was horribly depressed when I chose this book for my English "Book Review". Soon after reading the first page I categorized it to be Stupid, Useless and Crazy altogether! In other words a "Piece of Junk". FORTUNATELY, I had no way to get my mark other than reading it. I read it quickly because I hated it so much. When I reached the end, I had a complete look to the lives of the players (the characters). That "pre-reading" was my key to understand The Double Hook! So, try to follow these steps [IN ORDER]
1. Read it fast till the last end; focus on these nasty characters.
2. Make sure you know whom the characters are.
3. Read the book again with a fairly slow, thorough reading.
You'll find how easy it is to get inside the life of these people. My opinion is that "The Double Hook" is one of the best novels EVER! It increased my appreciation toward literature, Canadian Literature, and made me discover a new way to express your feelings. I think that the story is worthy to be turned into a movie. The story is somehow similar to that movie called "The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan
2005-05-09
| N.T.B.L.P (Mt. Malea) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4
The Double Hook - Sheila Watson
"In spare, allusive prose, Shiela Watson" annoys all readers with her pretentious format and conceited belief that she has an important message to depict through her novel. Ms. Watson attemps to portray universal themes, yet, I, as a reader from urban Canada, find myself unable to relate to the characters, ideas, and symbolism of The Double Hook. I do not believe in a mystical or divine creature called "Coyote", and I'm sure the intended audience (id est, the global community) share similar sentiments.
I really appreciate her use of quotation marks, basically, her lack thereof. If I were to not use proper grammer in an essay, I would be severely punished, however, since Ms. Watson does not include quotation marks, she is praised as a hero of modernist literature. Furthermore, she injects her writing with fragmented sentences, another literary crime for which I would be penalized. For instance, "Flesh mountainous contemplating" (page 16). Is this supposed to be impacting in some way, am I obligated to be amazed by such an attempt at profundity? In my opinion, this is merely an unsuccessful sentence. Perhaps Ms. Watson could explain the meaning or significance of this phrase, because without her, this code cannot be deciphered.
Not only does Ms. Watson fail to project her intended thoughts, she gives her readers the impression that she is arrogant. She is obviously trying very hard to be controversial and original, but she manages to succeed only in revealing her artifical and spurious personality. Some critics, an extremely small minority, refer to The Double Hook as a masterpiece of magic realism - I think, on the other hand, that it is an incoherent collection of random symbols and themes.
2005-02-21
| Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 1
Mixed Feelings
If this book were any longer, it might not be worth the effort required. However, it's brevity makes it possible to give it the two readings it probably requires (or at least, I required).
My three star rating reflects my mixed feelings about the book. It is interesting, but I feel its ambiguity wasn't entirely necessary.
All the characters in this book are pretty despicable,which I don't necessarily mind, I just wish I knew more about them in the end. The afterword mentions that Watson cut out a lot of the personal history of the characters in the editing process. I think I would've liked it more if she had kept that sort of thing in.
Also, an introduction would be particularly helpful, especially one that introduces the reader to the Coyote myth.
2004-12-16
(Edmonton Canada) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3
Hardship and Beauty
Sheila Watson's selective and allusive prose reveals the lives of a small isolated community in Western Canada where hardship and kindness shape daily existence and make it extraordinary. When reading this classic, one must let the various images flow to get the whole picture---it is truly a unique and refreshing reading experience. The atmosphere created is heavy with emotion--Greta's resentment, Ara's disappointement, the Widow's loneliness, James' struggle for independence, the mysterious death of the the old lady, and the touching birth of a little boy are fused together to create a rawness that is both scary and beautiful. It is a compelling novel that reveals the true force of Canadian talent, and is very much demonstrative of the endless possibities when one moves beyond traditional form
2003-10-10
(Canada) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4
An daring experimental novel of failure & redemption.
I was dismayed by the negative reviews of Watson's fine experimental novel, The Double Hook (1959). Most of them came from high school students who were required to read a book when they didn't really want to read anything. Clearly some students are being given this book prematurely in Canada.
For someone willing to give the book a chance, I have some suggestions. It concerns a frightened group of people living at the edge of civilization, in British Columbian Cariboo country. A former population of Native Canadians has been displaced by settlers like them. Each character is haunted by the spectral presence of Coyote, a trickster figure revered by the former natives. Although Coyote is a symbolic presence, and feared as a curse by the whites, he brings redemption because his continuity means the destruction of native influence isn't complete, or even possible. That relates to the "double hook" of the title--literally a hook that points two ways, so that "you can't catch the glory on a hook and hold on to it. That if you hook twice the glory you hook twice the fear" (61, Kip's thoughts).
The book is written largely in dialogue without quotation marks. Modern writers like Joyce and Woolf experimented with varied presentations of fiction in the early 20th century, and Watson is playing with these techniques. Do not be dismayed by them, though. The book is presenting characters deeply fearful of what is happening around them. What they most fear is their ability to control their own existence. When Mrs. Potter dies, she becomes part of that fear (like Mrs. Moore in Forster's A Passage to India, who becomes part of the legends of the caves when she dies). Fire ends the influence of Mrs. Potter, and characters who have been alienated come into a better alignment with each other. Shrewdly, the narrator tells us, "Coyote plotting to catch the glory for himself is fooled and every day fools others" (61). Finally, a new child born is named "Felix" (Latin for "fortunate"). Here Christian redemption in a newborn babe blends with native beliefs, again hooking us doubly.
Failure in this book derives from an unwillingness to look at the alien and accept its presence and importance. When characters stop doing that, they create a place for themselves in the most inhospitable locale Watson ever found herself (as a teacher in the early 1930s). The book reflects her mental struggle to reconcile the bleakness of life in the Cariboo with her sense that the remote locales of Canada matter as much as the sophisticated soirees of Montréal and Toronto.
Finally, a book by William Faulkner--As I Lay Dying--greatly influenced this book's characters and style. Watson's book makes a good deal more sense if you read Faulkner's book first, or at least get a plot description of it.
2000-06-14
| Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 5
A: Sheila, I think what Robert Kraft was saying -- but didn't say -- is that the team is being careful with big-money extensions without knowing what the and more »
MiamiHerald.comFrank M. Reid III, who is Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's pastor, said, "We need to turn to each other now and not on each other." After an Annapolis-based Man Charged In Hate Crime in Beating Of Elderly ManNo Bail For Beating Suspect Nicknamed "Hitler"White Men Attack Elderly Black Fisherman - -all 559 news articles »