By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept [Audiobook, Unabridged]

Elizabeth Smart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996 | ISBN-10: 0001050451 | ISBN-13: 978-0001050457 | Edition: Unabridged

This is a passionate account of the author's intense love affair with the poet George Barker. It explores a passion between a man and two women, one of them his wife - a love both despairing and triumphant.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

'Like Madame Bovary blasted by lightening... a masterpiece' - Angela Carter

'Fresh, vivid, candid, fine ... a novel of our time.' - Cyril Connolly

'At some point every good reader comes across By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. And he or she recognizes an emotion essential and permanent to us.' - Michael Ondaatje

'Explores a passion between a man and two women, one of them his wife - a love both despairing and triumphant upon which the reader may gaze, awed, appalled, or even, perhaps, envious.' - The Times

'Constructed as a single, sustained climax, it is like a cry of ecstasy which, without changing volume or pitch, becomes a cry of agony.' - Spectator

'A revelation ...This short, powerful work had a profound influence on rue and was one of the factors that made me want to be a writer.' - Beryl Bainbridge

'The emotion, the true and abject affliction, conics through ... to move the reader, and even to awe him.' - London Review of Books

'I doubt if there are half a dozen such masterpieces in the world.' - Brigid Brophy --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Elizabeth Smart was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1913. She was educated at private schools in Canada and for a year at King's College, University of London. One day, while browsing through a London bookshop, she chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker - and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife from Japan, where he was teaching, to join her in the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely recognized as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than four decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty, and power of impact.

After the war, Elizabeth Smart supported herself and her family through journalism and advertising work. In 1963 she became literary and associate editor of Queen magazine but subsequently dropped out of the literary scene to live quietly in a remote part of Suffolk. Elizabeth Smart died in 1986. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Publisher: Harpercollins Audio; Unabridged edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0001050451
• ISBN-13: 978-0001050457
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,018,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Okay, okay, so it's a bit overwrought,, October 8, 2000

By 

Daniel Polsby (Pasadena, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ardent Passion in it's most Primal Form, December 1, 2000

By 

Leslie Harrison (Boston, MA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Paperback)

I read this wonderful book 4 summers ago, (and still re-read it now and then)while vacationing in the Georgian Bay Islands, north of Toronto, Ontario, not far from where Elizabeth Smart originated from. From the first page, I was entwined with the lyrical prose and the all too real characters. I found myself re-living/remembering a form of love so intense, so passionate and all consuming...but to have it all encapsulated in this little gem of a book, so rich in colorful prose form, only illuminated something so rare and precious, that I for one, was once fortunate to have had in my lifetime. If you are one of the few that has ever experienced this form of love, you will find yourself re-living a part of yourself that you may have forgotten about...Or, if you're one of the many that has yet to experience that degree of powerful, yet uncontrollable, most ardent passion (that many believe only happens in the movies)...then read this unique book and experience first-hand the gut wrenching, heart stopping delirium of love, in it's most sincere, magical, sometimes painful, yet always, primal form.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed but enjoyable (in a depressing kind of way), February 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Paperback)

I saw this on my dad's bookshelf and fell in love with the title. It wasn't long since I'd been studying Eliot and the bathos (not to mention religious reference) in the title reminded me of him.

The book contains plenty of such moments - the police interview being my favourite. The language is rich and at times almost sickly (if it was much longer it could well become unbearable)

Criticising this book as overwrought and self indulgent is to miss the point. It's about a someone who is comletely distraut and obsessed about the events of there life. Everything in the world becomes her sorrow - literature, religion, history and nature are all made to reflect her state of mind. It's what all bad teenage poetry is aspiring too.

Overall it feels slightly flawed but don't let that put you off reading it; flawed books are often more interesting than near perfect ones. It may be over the top but it's certainly unusual and I enjoyed reading it.