Customer Reviews

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

My friend who leant me this book was really knocked out by it, and I could see why - there is something great in its extremeness. The novel is devoted to the author's very single-minded and solipsistic obsession/love (for the poet George Barker). For that extremeness and for scattered lines that knocked me out too, I'm glad I read it and give it a few stars.

But overall I agree with the reviewers who found the book painful and unintentionally funny because it is so out-of-control purple. (How bout spelling "O" the regular way, with an "h," now and then? :) The terrific bits of writing get lost in the really overdone passages - less so in the beginning, before so much of the bad stuff accumulates (e.g., "I am more vulnerable than the princess for whom 7 mattresses could not conceal one pea.")

The book has a very insular feel. It is dense with literary allusions woven casually into the prose. Based on the ones I recognized, like the fragment from Blake, I questioned the value of hunting up the others - I guess I just don't trust that the book would bring the active reader anywhere really rewarding - instead I got the feeling that Smart wasn't interested in her effect on readers, at least not any but George Barker. Which isn't necessarily the worst thing, it's sort of interesting, but this book could have been way more powerful if it had been more effectively crafted, if it had exploited its impact on the reader. Instead it's like reading the diary of someone pretty young, very gifted, but self-indulgent in the way young diary-writers are - the novel sort of doesn't seem meant for public consumption.

In my short life I have read numerous books, some I read with the detachment they deserved and some I perused with interest. This novel had me enthralled from the first sentence. It took three hours to read it and even though it is a book that you need to read over and over, the sheer poetic beauty is recognisable straight away. I strongly believe that this is the most most powerful story I have ever read, and yet it doesn't receive the recognition that it truly deserves. This book of poetic prose tells the story of a woman's love affair with a married man, the joy and despair it brings her, but mainly it delves deeply into the magic of love and how, even for just the short amount of time that it lasts it becomes everything that this young woman lives for. I strongly recommend this book to those who need depth and soul.

The ultimate in purple passionate prose by a love-sick woman. It might be too purple and passionate for some. A lot of agonizing guilt over the fact that her lover was married (in fact the real life George Barker was married many times so she might have been in doubt which wife to have the agonizing guilt about).
The basic story is of her meeting the British poet George Barker in California (where he was trying to stay to sit out the Second World War) and travelling across America to New York with him. He gets into jail and hospital and eventually has to return to England.
It becomes more coherent if you read Rosemary Sullivan's "By Heart" which is a biography of Elizabeth Smart. It's interesting to read of her later friendly contacts with Barker and his last wife. There's also a biography of George Barker by Robert Fraser which I haven't seen yet.

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.

Well, I still don't know what to think about this book. I finished it and had no idea what had just happened. It is very psychadelic, yet sometimes so overdramatic that you feel embarassed for the author. It is definitely worth reading for a taste of the syle; also it is a very short book.

Overall, I am glad I read it, but it is no Vita Nuova.

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.

It is a shame that this beautiful little book is out of print. Smart's liquid prose moves from bittersweet to ecstatic, but is always achingly lovely. Her love affair is rendered in exquisite language that lifts it to the level of myth or epic poetry.The book deserves to be better recognized.