By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Such a beautifully written book! Every page is imbued with the passion Smart felt for her lover, George Barker. Though, since Barker was married and a Catholic, their love would forever be carried out in secret or if not secret then without the approbation of society.
At one point, as detailed in the book, Smart and Barker were actually arrested in Arizona for sharing a bed when they were not married. Smart's mother was mortified by the affair and when this book was published she tried to have it banned in Ottawa. When that didn't work she went out and purchased all the copies she could find and burned them.

It would be interesting to know what Barker's wife felt during all this. Initially it seems that Smart was reluctant to consummate show more the affair because of his marriage. They were all living in a small community in California when the affair started so she must have know what was going on. And from some of the passages about her it seems that she had at least one miscarriage.
In the night she moans with the voice of the stream below my window, searching for the child whose touch she once felt and can never forget: the child who obeyed the laws of life better than she....Her shoulders have always the attitude of grieving, and her thin breasts are pitiful like Virgin Shrines that have been robbed.
So how difficult it must have been for her to see her husband's mistress give him a child.

I must confess I don't think I care for George Barker. Information available on the internet details that he had affairs with other women and at least 7 other children in addition to the 4 Smart eventually had with him. If he had remained true to her I would have felt that the affair was understandable as a grand passion but since he impregnated other women he obviously didn't feel as bound to her as she was to him. 'Twas ever thus. show less

This writing just intoxicates me. Makes me feel like I finally understand how to be less of a dick to women even when they're also being kind of a dick. (It's not like a manual--it's just Elizabeth Smart brings you into her world and you can't be a dick to someone without knowing it once you've been in their world).

The high-pitched tonal uniformity of this raw nerved outpouring is fortunately slim in pages (just 112 in my edition) but it's verging on being overweight when it comes to fabulous imagery. I found my copy in a street library. Whoever had previously read it had some kind of religious obsession and had heavily (urgently) underlined (in pencil) any conceivable reference to anything biblical, god, angels, martyrdom, and flowers. This meant that most pages bore marks but then books can bear that and, if anything, it enhanced my reading. I wondered what I would have made of the book if I knew nothing of Elizabeth Smart's life or had not read the foreword by Brigid Brophy. Nevertheless, there were many wonderful moments. For example,

Parent's

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imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom grow, but instead , contrary as trees, grow sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged.

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Wow, what a book!

I've often felt that the shortcoming of book reviews is the linear scale of 1 to 5 which has to cover everything. If that scale is the x axis I've often felt that there should also be a vertical y axis so you have a the linear scale for all the things it's for now but the vertical axis should be for the emotional impact rating.

I have read books that would score 3 on the linear scale but would score 5 on the vertical emotional scale and likewise books that score 5 on the regular scale but would barely make 1 on the vertical scale, Gone Girl for example.

For me this book would be a high 5 on the vertical scale and a 3 on the linear scale.

It reminded me so much of being passionately in love when I was in my mid twenties. show more It vividly brought back the cathartic emotional states that would engulf us from day to day. Ah such memories.

I am so glad I never read this when I was younger. show less

A prose poem of exquisite beauty, a tale of the overwhelming love of an intelligent, articulate woman for a man unworthy of her, a long drawn-out howl in the service of the idea that love can change the world for the better while simultaneously causing grief and mayhem wherever it goes. This is a flawless work, eloquent and moving and in some ways profoundly disturbing. Smart's writing is like fire dancing and flickering - beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Although those readers who like the simpleton A-to-B plotting that dominates so much of modern literature will perhaps find nothing here to like this is a hugely impressive achievement. English has such a massive vocabulary and flexibility to it yet there are few writers who show more take advantage of that to produce something that stretches the language to breaking point in the service of communicating depth and truth of experience. Anyone who loves language, who loves writing, who loves the idea that words on the page can be more than simple fireside tales writ large, should be thanking whatever deity they believe in every day that people like Elizabeth Smart chose to enter the ring and fight hard to put words on the page. This is a classic, and rightly so, and anyone who picks it up and remains unmoved should perhaps consider seeking professional help. show less

This is a devastating novel/novella/prose poem. I can't, in good conscience, give it a star rating. I enjoy parts of it, others I didn't get at all, but Smart writes about love in all its beauty and terror and it is a hard book but one worthy of your attention. That is all.

I liked the flowery prose and the indirect writing style but generally I think this book is overrated. Not enough of a plot to really know what it was about, but it was also short, which is also a plus.