Hugh MacLennan's Watch that Ends the Night is an engrossing read, as it is able to throttle the reader onto stage of 1930s world poltics gently back to the private lives of George Stewart and Katherine. An incredible story that details the struggle of the human condition against the strength of one's emottional desires. This is a beautifully written book about waiting; a generation's wait to leave the horrors of the 1930s, and one couple's wait for an inevitable though beautiful death. I greatly reccommend this book.

Thomas O'Grady's first collection of poems will not disappoint those who have followed his appearances in periodicals. The poems deal in a profound way with real questions, of which the most dominant is the theme of exile from the poet's native Prince Edward Island. There will no doubt be considerable resentment on the part of programmatic readers who hate either the subject matter of family life or the skilled use of fixed forms. Others will find little to object to. The workmanship is fine and the learning vast. O'Grady captures the speech patterns of the Irish diaspora far more accurately and artfully than the bogus and infinitely popular Frank McCourt. The book satisfies the reader in itself and promises other wonderful collections in the future.

This is Martel's second novel, and the winner of last year's Booker Prize. It tells the story of 16-year old Pi Patel, a young zookeeper's son, who ends up stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean with a 450 pound Bengal tiger named Parker on board with him. The circumstances leading up to Patel's being stranded on the raft and the unbelievable experiences he goes through, along with his overactive imagination, are what make this book truly exciting and a joy to read. It makes you wonder if you were in the same circumstances, would you be able to survive at sea alone for 227 days. The first part of the book discusses the idea of incorporating the world's religions and it seemed to drag on much too long. The story redeemed itself in the second half with the boy's adventure on the sea, and the complicated and unexpected turn of events that bring the story to a close.

There was much more to this story than I expected. It's true, I didn't care for some parts of it, but I was very impressed with the second half of the book, and surprised by the way it ended. It will make you think about what is and isn't reality. It's a book to contemplate and read more than once. This is one of those books I will always remember!

Joe Hanssen

Yann Martel has created one of the most likeable characters in recent days- Pi is intelligent, charming, and amazingly captivating. With small glimmers of "The Old Man and the Sea," Martel develops the ocean into an unforgiving, vast, and mysterious character. But perhaps the crux of the book occurs at the end, when Martel forces the reader to question the events and stories, and their ultimate meaning, that occur in the book. An absolute must read. We hope Marel can top it off.

"Life of Pi" packs so much into a little book. It starts off as a whimsical story of Indian teenager and his confusion about life, religion, and animals (his father is a zookeeper). It is reminiscent of John Irving's "Son of a Circus", and it bit like Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" but more fun. The story then takes a much more adventurous turn when the boy and his family embark on a sea voyage to Canada. No spoilers here, but what a fascinating story. While a book for all ages I think "Life of Pi" will become a classic for the "I am too old for Harry Potter, really!" teenaged set.

Bottom line: simply wonderful. Fully deserving of the Booker prize.

This is a very interesting book on two main counts, it describes the political climate amongst the intelligentsia in ther 1930's and it also offers a glimpse of what Montreal was like during the great depression.
Hugh Mclennon was a Montreal author, originally from Nova Scotia whoe was also a distinguished classics teacher teaching in Mcgill University.
The story is basically the relationship between Jerome Martell, a Monreal surgeon and his alter ego. George. Both are in love with the same women Catherine. Catherine is George's childhood friend who eventually marries Jerome then a successful surgeon. Jerome is someone from a modest background who had fought in WW1 and was notably damaged by his experience. He is a somewhat heroic charecter loosely based on Dr. Norman Bethune. At first he is happy with Catherine who is barely clinging to life with a damaged heart. However when Jerome becomes politically active, the relationship deteriorates and he abandons Catherine and their daughter Sally and goes off to fight on the Republican side in thr Spanish Civil War. He eventually disappears and is presumed dead. Catherine then turns to her old friend George and they marry. Jerome reappears twelve years later at the height of the Korean War and Catherine nearly dies of shock when she meets her ex husband.
The stregnth of the book is the descrition of St.Catherine Street, the main Montreal thoroughfare during the thirties with its unemployed crowds shuffling aimlessly. It is also good in the social ferment, in particular between the commuunist and the right wing French Canadians. Mclennon tries to use Jerome as a political everyman showing how devotion to a cause though well intentioned leads only to misery all around. He does this very well. In style the book sometimes reminds me of a Canadian Hemingway with occasional touches of A.J. Cronin. The weakness of the book is the sometimes unconvincing dialogue and the sketchy portraits of the female charecters. In summary this is a very informed and entertaining novel.

Very interesting book. Takes you back to the time when the "in" thing to do was to go off and fight for a noble cause. Contains the piece of the Tragically Hip sound "Courage" in it. A bit difficult to get into but once you do, you're captured.

I found this a very good book. Hugh Maclennan described each character very well to the point where i felt that i was part of the characters' lives. It was enjoyable to read what Montreal was like then and compare it to Montreal today, and read about the same streets that i walk on almost every day (I live in Montreal). In all, a good book.

Chess and poetry have a long history together. A game based upon a battle metaphor and individual confrontation has a great deal of symbolic material and ideas as a source of poetry. Solway's poems, using the chess imagery as a springboard for a number of observations and images, work quite well. Nothing in this work is the daring gambit that a 19th Century poet might bring to the chess motif, but in poetry, as in chess, the thrill of the unrestrained tactician has largely given way to the quiet, restrained accumulation of minor advantages and arcane theoretical novelties. If Mr. Solway's poems strike one more as the work of a positional Petrosian than a madness-tinged Morphy, the reader does not suffer. The work does not make any bold sacrifices in search of a quick checkmate, but the use of the metaphor to describe family interactions is quietly winning, and ultimately succeeds. This is accessible material, capably written, and I recommend it.

The book was actually one of Hugh Maclennan's best. The beginning is just amazing that I just couldn't put the book down. There were many climax in the book and there wasn't really one that I can point out that was outstanding. The end was even more amazing. So go buy and read it and enjoy.

I found this book very hard to get into. Our grade 12 english teacher picked it for a comprehensive novel study.I think that things just moved way too slow for my liking. It had a good story line but because of the nature it was writen in I would not recomend it to anyone.

A very interesting and unusual novel, and MacLennan's first (--which seems astounding, given its stylistic sophistication). The plot is intricate and suspenseful, and three of the four main characters are portrayed as fully conscious, focused beings, who are either aware of their own motives and values, or keenly interested in identifying them; the fourth character, Geoffrey Wain, exhibits a distinctly opposite mentality, and proves--therefore--to be a villainous threat to each of the others. Nautical engineer Penny Wain, Geoffrey's daughter, is a true rarity in modern literature: an intelligent, introspective, rational heroine. MacLennan's descriptive passages are typically colorful and dramatic, and often warrant immediate (and subsequent) re-reading (even though some do seem a bit drawn-out, on first reading). The much-heralded explosion is not, for my money, quite as interesting or dramatic as other parts of the plot, so the reader shouldn't "wait for" that: the first three-quarters of the book is the main course; and the last quarter, a light dessert. Overall, MacLennan has given us a banquet to savor.

Another entry from the Canadian New Library Series, another homerun for Canadian literature. That must necessarily be the ruling on this immensely engaging 1941 freshman effort from Hugh MacLennan, for "Barometer Rising" is a taut, intensely character driven novel from one of Canada's great essayists. MacLennan went on to write several other novels, more essays, and even some travelogues, history, and poetry. He is nothing if not versatile. If only more people knew about the wealth of literary gems from the Great White North awaiting their pleasure in the libraries and bookstores. For those interested in exploring the brilliance of Canadian literature, Hugh MacLennan is a great place to start. Hugh MacLennan died in 1990.

"Barometer Rising" takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia during 1917. The war in Europe continues to grind away, chewing up young men from around the world in its trenches and no man's lands. Nearly every passing day sees troopships exiting Halifax harbor bound for the bloodbath, and nearly every day they pass supply and munitions ships entering the port on their way to and from Europe. The city is full of foreign sailors and soldiers from every point of the compass. The war is a big deal, and since Canada serves as Britain's whipping boy, Halifax provides a safe harbor beyond the reach of German U-boats. But disaster lurks in the waters off Halifax: a munitions ship loaded with 500,000 pounds of trinitrotoluol sails into the harbor and collides with another ship. The resulting explosion is nearly nuclear in its destructiveness. Thousands die as major sections of the city explode and burn. The author shrewdly sets up his novel in countdown form, beginning on the Sunday before the explosion and ending the tale the following Monday, a few days after the disaster. MacLennan makes this Nova Scotian city the major character in his book, showing the reader the wartime changes while allowing us to take an occasional glimpse behind the curtain to see the way the city was before the war.

A cast of characters parades through the streets of Halifax for our perusal. The Wain family is central to the story. There is Penelope "Penny" Wain, a brilliant woman who designs boats for the war effort while withstanding the barbs from jealous male co-workers. Her father, Colonel Wain, is an old pro-English patriarch who cannot stand the fact that he remains in Halifax while the war rages in Europe. He wishes to return to battle and seek some glory, but his first tour of duty ended in disaster. For this disgrace, Wain blames his nephew Neil Macrae. Now Neil roams the streets of Halifax, seeking redemption for a tragedy on the fields of Europe. The reemergence of Neil places Major Angus Murray in a moral quandary; he realizes the return of Wain's nephew will upset his plans for the future. The reader must decide for themselves if the choices the characters make are the correct ones.

An afterword (the Canadians are polite; they do not put spoilers at the beginning of the book as we do in the United States) written by Alistair MacLeod provides some personal anecdotes about the explosion, followed by a critique of the story. To MacLeod, the story deftly reveals the big town/small town differences between some of the characters, between those born and raised in Halifax versus those who hail from Cape Breton. For me, the most interesting theme of the book was MacLennan's political views about Canada and its relationship to the United States and England. To the author, Canada will emerge from the war as the keystone of the world, a bridge between barbaric Europe lost in its destructive wars and the emerging power of the United States. He deplores the second-class status of Canada, its relegation as second fiddle to the United Kingdom. Several times throughout the story, the characters step back from their activities and wax philosophic about the position of Canada and Nova Scotia in relation to the rest of the world. To call MacLennan a Canadian nationalist would not be too extreme of a statement.

I did not know what to expect from this book when I opened its covers. I do like Canadian literature, so that is never a problem. "Barometer Rising" is only 219 pages long, so it is necessary that the author grabs you fast and makes you care about his creation. He succeeds in spades because he brings his characters to life through carefully crafted scenes of introspection, clinical descriptions of the city, and the dramatic countdown to the explosion. The reader cares about what happens to these people, and hopes that the author will bring everything to a tidy resolution in the end. For a quick read that is hugely entertaining and leaves you hungry for more, seek out this book.

Although it has been several years since I have read "Two Solitudes," the book remains quite vivid for me -- perhaps, in no small part, because I live only a few miles from the Quebec border, and listen quite attentively to Canadian news on the radio. Everything, and yet nothing has changed regarding Anglo-French relations over the sixty years that have passed since the conclusion of the action in the book. Of course, English shop clerks in Montreal no longer tell Francophone patrons to "speak white;" the Roman Catholic Church has lost virtually all of its influence over French Canadians; the notion of the French being "maitres chez nous" -- masters in our own house -- has triumphed to such an extent that the province came within a hair's breadth of voting for independence several years ago. Yet despite the all but de facto political autonomy of Quebec -- and in no small part because of it -- all of the old misunderstanding and mistrust so skillfully depicted in MacLennan's book persist. Two profoundly different cultures, heirs to profoundly different colonial pasts, still vie for the soul of the second largest nation on earth. For this reason alone, Americans (famously and shamefully ignorant of Canadian history) ought to read "Two Solitudes;" for Canadians, or course, it should be required reading. But "Two Solitudes" is not merely a sociopolitical tract. I found the love story quite engaging, with neither of the characters presented as a mere representation of ethnicity and class, and the resolution ennobling in a way one doesn't expect from a novel any more. The term "old-fashioned" comes to mind, but I'm afraid that will be terribly off-putting for many modern readers. Let's call the book solid, sure, and rewarding, then -- and evocative and informative as well. That's a lot to put into a package this tidily crafted, but MacLennan has done it well. Exclusive of the work of Robertson Davies, in a class by itself, "Two Solitudes" bids fair to be called the Great Canadian Novel.

Two solitudes by Hugh MacLennan is a graet Canadian novel. it discusses all canadian themes, such as landscape, bilingulism, conflicts on identity etc.
I will ask every canadian to read this book. It's worth your time.

I love this book. MacLennan's descriptions of the natural landscape and of human nature are eloquent and perceptive. I've circled and starred many passages throughout the book that I thought were wise and beautifully written.

This book reads like it was written in 1990 and the author never bothered to do any further research. It makes some good points, but it should not be a first choice for a survey of the state of the art with regard to functional, OO, and logic programming.

I just purchased this book (at a fraction of the original price ;-) ) after browsing briefly through the chapters on Lisp and Smalltalk, which I found very well written. Another chapter introduces into language implementation issues (the stack machine, activation records, ... ).

If you are not already a computer scientist and don't bother with C++ and Java, this book may be interesting for you as well.

This second book by up-and-coming Canadian poet, Carmine Starnino suffers from terminal pretentiousness, limp conservatism and an unforgivable bout of bad ear. I saw Starnino read from his first book in Ottawa a few years ago, and was pleasantly struck by the sincerity and youthful energy in his albeit turgid poetry. At that point, I was hoping this young poet would be able to emerge from the overbearing weight of his obvious influences: David Solway and Eric Ormsby (two writers also based in Montreal), and find his own voice. Unfortunately, what we get here, is more simplistic, untruthful, poems about the writer's Italian origins, and heavy-handed formal poems that, while showing a keen interest in word-play, utimately come off as derivative, preachy, and well... boring. In "Credo" what we end up with is a young writer who is striving to write like a "master", sounding old and tired beyond his years. Let's hope that Starnino can rediscover some the vigour that I witnessed at his reading in Ottawa, and come up with something more imaginative and fresh than what is presented in this quite disposable collection.