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The Double Hook
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.
136 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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About the author
Sheila Watson
23Ìýbooks7ÌýfollowersBorn Sheila Martin Doherty, she grew up on the grounds of the provincial mental hospital where her father, Dr. Charles Edward Doherty, was the superintendent until his death in 1922. After studying at Vancouver's Convent of the Sacred Heart, Sheila Doherty finished her university studies at the University of British Columbia in 1933. She then worked as an elementary and high school teacher throughout British Columbia â€� including two years in Dog Creek (1935â€�1937), which served as a basis for her first novel, Deep Hollow Creek. She married Canadian poet Wilfred Watson in 1941.
Watson wrote The Double Hook between 1952 and 1954 in Calgary and revised it during a year-long stay in Paris. It was published in 1959 and was instantly recognized as a modern classic.
In 1976, she and her husband moved to Nanaimo, where they died in 1998.
Watson wrote The Double Hook between 1952 and 1954 in Calgary and revised it during a year-long stay in Paris. It was published in 1959 and was instantly recognized as a modern classic.
In 1976, she and her husband moved to Nanaimo, where they died in 1998.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
November 16, 2017
After examining a manuscript copy of The Double Hook, Frederick M. Saltzer—a literature professor at the University of Alberta—cautioned Sheila Watson that readers tend to "gallop" through works of fiction, and that her novella thereby courted both "bewilderment" and "frustration."
It's an apt warning. For to the ire of hurried readers everywhere, The Double Hook doesn't tell a story so much as it suggests one. Writing in sparse and muscular prose, Watson doles out narrative facts and descriptions with a measured hand: the name of a principle character might remain unsaid for most of the book, while a critical plot point could appear only as an uncompleted inference. Which makes the act of reading akin to stumbling upon—and subsequently trying to make sense of—a private conversation between two close friends.
But for those who put in the time and effort, The Double Hook emerges as a sophisticated and challenging piece of Modernist fiction. Saltzer even called it a "perfect work." And here, too, he's not terribly far off the mark.
It's an apt warning. For to the ire of hurried readers everywhere, The Double Hook doesn't tell a story so much as it suggests one. Writing in sparse and muscular prose, Watson doles out narrative facts and descriptions with a measured hand: the name of a principle character might remain unsaid for most of the book, while a critical plot point could appear only as an uncompleted inference. Which makes the act of reading akin to stumbling upon—and subsequently trying to make sense of—a private conversation between two close friends.
But for those who put in the time and effort, The Double Hook emerges as a sophisticated and challenging piece of Modernist fiction. Saltzer even called it a "perfect work." And here, too, he's not terribly far off the mark.
October 15, 2018
Yes, the writing is terse to the point of being truncated. Yes, it reads like modernist art. Yes, you may be halfway through before you figure out what's going on. And yes, the canvas is so small and the story so intensely focused that the book could be thought of as eligible for a maximum four stars simply because of its limited scope.
Yet it remains a monumental achievement � a foundation of modern Canadian literature written and published at a time when some universities (including the one where Watson was located) were still debating whether there was such a thing as Canadian literature. They knew that Canadian writing existed, but could it be called literature?
The story combines symbols and naturalism. The writing is a marvel. It attracts descriptions such as spare, lean, sere. Yet it is packed with meaning. I intend to read the book again soon, confident that I will see things in it that I missed before. It's short but it demands to be read slowly, taking as much time as a book twice its length.
On the surface, it's about a few life-weathered characters in British Columbia's Cariboo country (these characters are scarred souls instead of the down-to-earth people in Paul St. Pierre's books, which are set in the same neighbourhood). Really, it's about humans anywhere.
There's a dry Biblical simplicity to the storytelling as well as to the contents. In a way, the book is reminiscent of the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven, although Watson's book is stripped down even by Eastwood's standards.
Not for everyone. A landmark for anyone who will like it.
The back cover and whatever I'd read about it did not begin to describe the content. It still is probably less well known than it deserves. One reason is its relative age. I picked it up off a shelf where it sat neglected for about three decades, a souvenir of my wife's undergraduate days. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ does not even show the edition I read â€� a 1965 second printing of the original 1959 edition. An introduction says McClelland and Stewart ran an "experiment" with the book by publishing a paperback first edition.
Yet it remains a monumental achievement � a foundation of modern Canadian literature written and published at a time when some universities (including the one where Watson was located) were still debating whether there was such a thing as Canadian literature. They knew that Canadian writing existed, but could it be called literature?
The story combines symbols and naturalism. The writing is a marvel. It attracts descriptions such as spare, lean, sere. Yet it is packed with meaning. I intend to read the book again soon, confident that I will see things in it that I missed before. It's short but it demands to be read slowly, taking as much time as a book twice its length.
On the surface, it's about a few life-weathered characters in British Columbia's Cariboo country (these characters are scarred souls instead of the down-to-earth people in Paul St. Pierre's books, which are set in the same neighbourhood). Really, it's about humans anywhere.
There's a dry Biblical simplicity to the storytelling as well as to the contents. In a way, the book is reminiscent of the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven, although Watson's book is stripped down even by Eastwood's standards.
Not for everyone. A landmark for anyone who will like it.
The back cover and whatever I'd read about it did not begin to describe the content. It still is probably less well known than it deserves. One reason is its relative age. I picked it up off a shelf where it sat neglected for about three decades, a souvenir of my wife's undergraduate days. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ does not even show the edition I read â€� a 1965 second printing of the original 1959 edition. An introduction says McClelland and Stewart ran an "experiment" with the book by publishing a paperback first edition.
March 9, 2013
A strange and spare narrative, set in the Cariboo country of British Columbia, but if you didn't know that from the flyleaf you'd never be able to figure it out from the story. The story lines are full of foreboding, of violence, of loneliness, and yet the story ends with a birth and some measure of hope, but not until the reader has traversed a psychological landscape dotted with an apparent matricide, a self-immolation, a blinding, some bed-hopping, and a ghost that loves fishing. I've probably read weirder books, but not today. Still, I couldn't set it aside, and while it is very short (just over 100 pages) it has the effect of a longer work. Might be of great interest to students of writing.
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
September 27, 2017Meh. I vaguely remember liking this 1959 novel a lot when I first encountered it in university back in the 80s. This, my much-anticipated re-read, didn't go well. A little too biblical, lyrical, and spare for my tastes, like some old story about the wrath of God being shouted at me underwater by a drunk poet. Bailed a quarter of the way in.
February 11, 2017
Someone just gave me a copy of the first paperback M&S edition (copyright 1959) and, feeling guilty for not having read this Canadian classic decades ago, I started it last night. I'm rating my "enjoyment level" although I'm only on page 30 and already frustrated by the spareness of the story, way too narrow and controlled for my taste.
I've lived in the Cariboo and just found out (from other reviewers here) that The Double Hook is set in Cariboo country. Really, it's the sort of thing I'd like to have gleaned from the narrative. Well, the prickly pears were a clue... Funny, when I lived in Kamloops, I met many talented writers but nobody mentioned Sheila Watson or praised her novel.
Is it too much to ask of fiction that characters should take on form in the first few pages, instead of remaining shadowy ciphers? Yes, I appreciate the surprising nouns: "The white bulls of the sky shoulder to shoulder." But these seem like skimpy rewards for the effort of squinting through the murk. Must I endure the whole 136 pages to find out if I agree with the nameless critic that this is "a book of rare beauty, artistry and power" -- ?
Another reviewer clarifies what we're up against: "She is concerned with the response to life of homo sapiens... What is present is life itself, and we must fit the pieces together ... She will find her audience among those whose reading muscles are capable of exercise and development..."
Toronto publishers' blurbs were less sophisticated back then. Grit your teeth, this is Canada, they seem to be saying: you're about to undergo surgery without anaesthetic.
I've lived in the Cariboo and just found out (from other reviewers here) that The Double Hook is set in Cariboo country. Really, it's the sort of thing I'd like to have gleaned from the narrative. Well, the prickly pears were a clue... Funny, when I lived in Kamloops, I met many talented writers but nobody mentioned Sheila Watson or praised her novel.
Is it too much to ask of fiction that characters should take on form in the first few pages, instead of remaining shadowy ciphers? Yes, I appreciate the surprising nouns: "The white bulls of the sky shoulder to shoulder." But these seem like skimpy rewards for the effort of squinting through the murk. Must I endure the whole 136 pages to find out if I agree with the nameless critic that this is "a book of rare beauty, artistry and power" -- ?
Another reviewer clarifies what we're up against: "She is concerned with the response to life of homo sapiens... What is present is life itself, and we must fit the pieces together ... She will find her audience among those whose reading muscles are capable of exercise and development..."
Toronto publishers' blurbs were less sophisticated back then. Grit your teeth, this is Canada, they seem to be saying: you're about to undergo surgery without anaesthetic.
September 22, 2016
all we get is a gimpse of the story and the characters who inhabit this short novella. they are never fully brought into focus; rather their lives can only be interpreted through inference. 'modernism' in Canadian lit took a while to get going (1950s?) and Sheila Watson's 'Double Hook' is a preeminent work that shares many stylistic characteristics with this movement such as ambiguity, fragmentation, lack of characterization and plot, which reminds me of a mix between william faulkner, virginia Woolf with perhaps a sprinkle of hemingway and cormac mccarthy (she prefers to eschew with quotation marks when characters speak too). The coyote trickster is a common motif in Canadian lit and he shows up here to represent the spiritual realm of myth. Terse and incredibly dense, who knew country folk living in rural BC spoke with such poeticism??
April 20, 2017
Beautiful, poetic language creating a surreal, dark but redemptive dream.
October 12, 2011
We read The Double Hook for one of my English classes, and it's definitely an interesting story. It's not told in a conventional way, and even the story itself is quite unconventional. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I didn't understand half of what was going on, but I did find it to be an intriguing story. One that I hope to reread one day, and maybe understand a little better...we haven't gone over it in class yet, so maybe it'll start to become even clearer then. Either way, I thought that it was interesting, and I enjoyed reading something so different. I liked picking up subtle hints that are hidden within the dialogue of the text (even the dialogue is unconventional though, quotations aren't used), and sometimes it was hard to understand who was talking, but I kind of enjoyed that. Figuring out which "she" was speaking was a great way to get into the text because it lead to a more in-depth look while reading. I think that The Double Hook is a great story to read when you want something that's a little different, and when you have time to give it the attention it deserves. I tried to read this one slowly myself, it only has 141 numbered pages (including the Afterword and Acknowledgements), so it isn't long, but as I sad, this book does require time. Sometimes you have to stop and reread, or stop and think on it. Overall though, I really liked it. It certainly kept me on my toes. :)
June 13, 2019
I’d been meaning to read this one for decades. I love the title and the story � an isolated ranch family community in the B.C. Cariboo does...something � was intriguing if mysterious. It’s also very short, under two hundred pages.
It still took me most of the day to read. The prose is obscure, poetic, at times really lovely and at other times frustratingly hard to decipher. It reminded me of Faulkner (isolated rural family’s discontents play out eternal and quasi-Christian concerns) and of Cormac McCarthy (horses, unforgiving wilderness, violence described in spare but lyrical terms.)
I am a bit reassured/disappointed to learn that many learned, literary people have not known what to make of this book, or sometimes even what it’s about. I felt like I was prying sentences apart to peer between and inside them, to understand who was speaking of whom, what relationships people bore to each other, and what exactly was going on. We got to the end of the book and a woman gave birth and I didn’t even know she was pregnant, let alone at term.
All that said, I respect the voice and the style here, which I understand was groundbreaking in its day. I’m also curious to read some criticism of this book, to get a sense of what other have made of it.
It still took me most of the day to read. The prose is obscure, poetic, at times really lovely and at other times frustratingly hard to decipher. It reminded me of Faulkner (isolated rural family’s discontents play out eternal and quasi-Christian concerns) and of Cormac McCarthy (horses, unforgiving wilderness, violence described in spare but lyrical terms.)
I am a bit reassured/disappointed to learn that many learned, literary people have not known what to make of this book, or sometimes even what it’s about. I felt like I was prying sentences apart to peer between and inside them, to understand who was speaking of whom, what relationships people bore to each other, and what exactly was going on. We got to the end of the book and a woman gave birth and I didn’t even know she was pregnant, let alone at term.
All that said, I respect the voice and the style here, which I understand was groundbreaking in its day. I’m also curious to read some criticism of this book, to get a sense of what other have made of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2014
Challenging. Demands a more thorough reading next time.
June 21, 2015
Not an easy read. Quite disturbing.
June 16, 2023
He's like his old lady, Kip thought. There's a thing he doesn't know. He doesn't know you can't catch the glory on a hook and hold on to it. That when you fish for the glory you catch the darkness too. That if you hook twice the glory you hook twice the fear. That Coyote plotting to catch the glory for himself is fooled and every day fools others. He doesn't know, Kip thought, how much mischief Coyote can make.
My thin copy of Sheila Watson's 1959 novel The Double Hook has the splash tag NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY CLASSIC. Purportedly, the story takes place in British Columbia, but the author never makes that abundantly clear. The characters are Canadian, but, again, they could just as well be from Appalachia or Romania. The author is Canadian, so there is that. Bottomline: Through sparse prose and universal characters, the novel is as regional as Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. If a country's literature should enlighten a reader to a country's proclivities and priorities--say, like James Joyce does for Ireland, Jane Austen for England,or Toni Morrison does for Amurica--then Watson's novel does not meet the criteria for Canada. It's not about establishing place--it's about establishing craft.
So the writing is very sparse with hardly a complex sentence in the whole batch. The characters are symbols and their actions religious allegories. As a former English teacher and student, literary alarm bells kept ringing as I read--"Hey, this is a counterpoint to what occurred ten pages ago!" "Hey, this is an allusion to Dante!"--, so I know that this is "literature" in the sense that it could be used with a class of grumpy students forced to read it and endure discussions of its artistry and allusions. But, the in the end, it doesn't reach the heart, doesn't really stir the soul. Honestly, I left the novel more confused than I entered and I was concerned the structure was likely too flimsy to endure a closer scrutiny.
Please, Canada--you have better classics, n'est-ce pas? I'm sure you do.
Ara was sitting on the ground, her arms holding her knees close to her chest, her eyes on the boy's scorched and torn shirt.
The words of the lord came, saying: Say now to the rebellious house. Know you not what these things mean?
My thin copy of Sheila Watson's 1959 novel The Double Hook has the splash tag NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY CLASSIC. Purportedly, the story takes place in British Columbia, but the author never makes that abundantly clear. The characters are Canadian, but, again, they could just as well be from Appalachia or Romania. The author is Canadian, so there is that. Bottomline: Through sparse prose and universal characters, the novel is as regional as Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. If a country's literature should enlighten a reader to a country's proclivities and priorities--say, like James Joyce does for Ireland, Jane Austen for England,or Toni Morrison does for Amurica--then Watson's novel does not meet the criteria for Canada. It's not about establishing place--it's about establishing craft.
So the writing is very sparse with hardly a complex sentence in the whole batch. The characters are symbols and their actions religious allegories. As a former English teacher and student, literary alarm bells kept ringing as I read--"Hey, this is a counterpoint to what occurred ten pages ago!" "Hey, this is an allusion to Dante!"--, so I know that this is "literature" in the sense that it could be used with a class of grumpy students forced to read it and endure discussions of its artistry and allusions. But, the in the end, it doesn't reach the heart, doesn't really stir the soul. Honestly, I left the novel more confused than I entered and I was concerned the structure was likely too flimsy to endure a closer scrutiny.
Please, Canada--you have better classics, n'est-ce pas? I'm sure you do.
Ara was sitting on the ground, her arms holding her knees close to her chest, her eyes on the boy's scorched and torn shirt.
The words of the lord came, saying: Say now to the rebellious house. Know you not what these things mean?
May 3, 2017
Brilliant and challenging. This is a book I must read again when I am not consuming books like air, when I want to learn more about what I can do as a novelist, as a writer, when I want to delve deeper into the mystery that is writing and life. For now, I move on.
Here is a glimmer so that I can take it in.
"Like the country that beckoned its author in 1934, and that gave her its images, The Double Hook is a complex mixture: by turns beautiful, violent, and devious; certainly paradoxical; unquestionably indecorous. A parrot drinks beer in this book, and the sky has a skin, and woman becomes the tangled garden that she wears, in a house that has jaws. Quotation marks no longer 'fence off' a man's or a woman's words, as narrative moves uninhibited into the realm of drama and out again, snatching economy and vividness. The old guarantees have vanished; and yet there is still 'The whole thing to live again.' Here the 'Words said over and over' retain their old urgency, though they are spoken now with a new clarity." (From the Afterword by F.T. Flahiff)
Could someone not Aboriginal write using Coyote now? Hard to say, but she did and he was another character, and much less known then than now. It was a risk; the whole thing was a risk really, and amazing.
"He [Coyote] was a creature of the district where Watson taught and about which she wrote: his place in her book is here and his time is now. He answers to people's need to account for their world: he is their tyrant and their 'thing,' his roles as trickster and demi-god and buffoon embodying the motley nature of existence itself. He is as wily as Ulysses, as elusive as Proteus, as malicious as Satan, as ingenious as Prometheus (for Coyote, too, is a stealer of fire). He is the father of the Shuswap, wiser than Raven, master of the elements. Like Jehovah, he brings down the proud. 'A man full up on beer saying in that beer how big he is,' Angel observes. 'Not knowing that Coyote'll get him just walking round the side of the house to make water' (Two, 6). Also like Jehovah--and like the Fates and household and tribal gods of other times and other places--he is an arbiter of consequences.
Watson introduces Coyote with no apologies, and thus she deals with those who would counsel 'something else.' Certainly, such analogies as he invites by virtue of his nature, his power, and his influence, serve to connect him and those who live under his eye with other gods and other people. At the same time as he answers to such shared needs and fears, however, he remains the creature of a particular place. Here, he bears witness to what he embodies: the continuing presence of origins and their consequences..." (From the Afterword by F.T. Flahiff)
Needing explanations, and here is her thought process on how, in part, this novel came to be:
"She [Watson] thought, according to here own account, about a problem and a place. Whether or not it was possible for a writer in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century to write about a particular place without remaining merely regional--this was the problem. '...[H]ow do you? how are you international if you're not international? if you're very provincial, very local, and very much a part of your own milieu...'..." (From the Afterword by F.T. Flahiff)
Beautiful images. Watson writes like a poet-inspiring.
"Now he sat silent as an osprey on a snag. Waiting. Because he knew how to wait. Watching only the images which he could shatter with a stone or bend with his hand. He heard a fish break water. He did not stir. He heard a bird's wing cut the air. He heard a mouse turn in the hollow of a long.
Tomorrow, he said. Tomorrow is best for such things."
Water is a theme, the fish the fishing, the water, it's slippery (like the story), it's deep (like the depths of emotions and relationships), and it has its limits (like everything.
"It couldn't rise, William would say. Not in summer. Why, the wonder is there's any water at all. I've known creeks fall so low, he'd say, that the fish were gasping in the shallowness. The day will come, he'd say, when the land will swallow the last drop. The creek's be dry as a parched mouth. The earth, he'd say, won't have enough spit left to smack its lips.
It couldn't rise, William would say; but she'd felt it rise."
It's a mysterious book. Simple, and yet unclear all at once.
"He doesn't know
you can't catch
the glory on a hook
and hold on to it.
That when you
fish for the glory
you catch the
darkness too.
That if you hook
twice the glory
you hook
twice the fear."
The cast of characters, worth noting and the story is here too. Thus it BEGINS.
"1
In the folds of the hills
under Coyote's eye
lived
the old lady, mother of William
of James and of Greta
lived James and Greta
lived William and Ara his wife
lived the Widow Wagner
the Widow's girl Lenchen
the Widow's boy
lived Felix Prosper and Angel
lived Theophil
and Kip
until one morning in July
Greta was at the stove. Turning hotcakes. Reaching for the coffee beans. Grinding away James's voice.
James was at the top of the stairs. His hand halfraised. His voice in the rafters.
James walking away. The old lady falling. There under the jaw of the roof. In the vault of the bed loft. Into the shadow of death. Pushed by James's will. By James's hand. By James's words: This is my day. You'll not fish today."
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November 27, 2024läste mest den här pga torontoskolan men måste säga att jag blev positivt överraskad!! tänkte mkt på tarjei vesaas och bitvis moa martinson under läsningen! kul!
September 26, 2020
This is a novel that I read twice. I read in once through in a matter of hours and then turned around and read it again. It is a novel that rewards re-reading and it is a novel that rewards careful reading. It is a dense but spare novel but it is also a novel rich with insight. The novel. The novel ends with these words from the Coyote spirit.
I have set his foot upon soft ground
I have set his feet on the sloping shoulders
Of this world
Humanity has been placed in a world of ambiguity. That is a world in which the outcomes of action cannot be foreseen. In which good acts may have evil consequences and from evil may come good. This is a world in which acts are not singular. They have consequences which propagate through time through multiple situations and multiple people. This is the “double hook� of the title. This is a novel of deep religious insight. It is a novel of religion that is sensitive to human frailty; that is sensitive to the inability of people to understand the full consequences of their actions. It because of this frailty and lack of knowledge of consequences that people can be forgiven. It is because of this frailty that people can find redemption.
James Potter has had a love affair with the widow Wagner’s daughter Lenchen. A pregnancy has resulted from this affair and as a result the widow hss thrown Lenchen out of her house. James and his mother have argued and in his anger, James has thrown his mother down the stairs resulting in her death. That is the beginning of this novel. The novel is the working out of this among the multiple characters. Was the conception of the baby an act of love or an act of corruption?
The novel is full of imagery that illuminates that ambiguity of human actions. Water is both a life giver and a destroyer. It can sustain life in the world but it can also create violent damaging storms. William Potter’s car create ruts in the rain sodden road that will plague beasts and man
It only takes a couple of hours of pleasant hours to read this novel. It is not a novel to gobble down like a fast food meal. It is a novel to slowly consume. It is a very significant novel
I have set his foot upon soft ground
I have set his feet on the sloping shoulders
Of this world
Humanity has been placed in a world of ambiguity. That is a world in which the outcomes of action cannot be foreseen. In which good acts may have evil consequences and from evil may come good. This is a world in which acts are not singular. They have consequences which propagate through time through multiple situations and multiple people. This is the “double hook� of the title. This is a novel of deep religious insight. It is a novel of religion that is sensitive to human frailty; that is sensitive to the inability of people to understand the full consequences of their actions. It because of this frailty and lack of knowledge of consequences that people can be forgiven. It is because of this frailty that people can find redemption.
James Potter has had a love affair with the widow Wagner’s daughter Lenchen. A pregnancy has resulted from this affair and as a result the widow hss thrown Lenchen out of her house. James and his mother have argued and in his anger, James has thrown his mother down the stairs resulting in her death. That is the beginning of this novel. The novel is the working out of this among the multiple characters. Was the conception of the baby an act of love or an act of corruption?
The novel is full of imagery that illuminates that ambiguity of human actions. Water is both a life giver and a destroyer. It can sustain life in the world but it can also create violent damaging storms. William Potter’s car create ruts in the rain sodden road that will plague beasts and man
It only takes a couple of hours of pleasant hours to read this novel. It is not a novel to gobble down like a fast food meal. It is a novel to slowly consume. It is a very significant novel
October 26, 2016
The title, The Double Hook, a quotation from the text helps to understand it—“…you can’t catch glory on a hook and hold on to it…when you fish for glory you catch the darkness too.� Infused with poetry and prose, and indigenous legend, Sheila Watson’s book is set in British Columbia in caribou country, and involves a mother, two sons, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law along with a few neighbours. There is no defined protagonist, and the characters are not well developed. Laced with spirituality, myth, and motifs, the reader at times must ask what is the story all about. According to Watson, she wanted to show how people are driven if they have no art or culture to follow—they will either resort to violence, or cut themselves off from society. She wanted the characters to represent voices coming out of the land. I think she achieved this, and more. Imagery is strong, and although little description is given about the characters, the reader is still able to visualize them. Touted as a modernist book, The Double Hook is the most unusual and difficult book that I have read. It is powerful, haunting, confusing and not easily understood; however, it deserves a second, maybe even a third reading.
April 24, 2016
Reading this had much the same feel for me as reading Cormac McCarthy, and not just because of the irritating "literary" habit of conveying direct dialogue without quotation marks (a habit that puts the reader through a lot of extra work of comprehension without any sort of benefits, most of the time). It's spare to the point of being laconic, leaves a lot of plot & emotional gaps for you to fill in, and is set in a very unforgiving landscape that echoes the apparent aridity of the characters' lives. Oh, and of course it's full of symbolism and religious (or quasi-religious) imagery.
I would have sunk my teeth into this one with a lot more enthusiasm when I was a student of literature many years ago. Now I can only note that while I enjoyed puzzling out the narrative as I was reading it, I can barely remember either characters or progression of events a mere month later, and have no particular desire to re-engage with them. For me, at least, it's definitely more of a curiosity than a classic.
I would have sunk my teeth into this one with a lot more enthusiasm when I was a student of literature many years ago. Now I can only note that while I enjoyed puzzling out the narrative as I was reading it, I can barely remember either characters or progression of events a mere month later, and have no particular desire to re-engage with them. For me, at least, it's definitely more of a curiosity than a classic.
February 16, 2017
This is a Canadian Classic, but I had never heard of it until a few years ago when it appeared on CBC's 100 Novels That Make You Proud to be Canadian. The reviews indicate that people either love it or hate it. It you are used to contemporary writing, I'd see that you might have trouble with this novel, but it's not long, just over 80 pages and I'd say stick with it. I haven't read much John Steinbeck but it reminded me of his writing. Sparse and tense - a lot of reading between the lines to make sense what may or may not be happening.
Prior to Double Hook, I had just finished reading Alistair MacLeod's The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. Both books take place in the same time frame, The Double Hook was published in 1959 and while Lost Salt was published in 1976 but writes of times prior. The Double Hook on the west coast and the Lost Salt on the East Coast, opposite sides of the country, but similar in their telling of people eking out a living in the harsh windy landscapes of Canada.
Prior to Double Hook, I had just finished reading Alistair MacLeod's The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. Both books take place in the same time frame, The Double Hook was published in 1959 and while Lost Salt was published in 1976 but writes of times prior. The Double Hook on the west coast and the Lost Salt on the East Coast, opposite sides of the country, but similar in their telling of people eking out a living in the harsh windy landscapes of Canada.
August 16, 2017
My friend Hannah recommended this after I raved about . And of course Paper Hound had it, face out, when I went there later in the week. And well recommended! I had to read it twice, straight through. The style is so minimal and sparse, so much is unsaid, that after reading it quickly (because the plot) the first time, I wanted to savour it a bit more, so I went right back to page 1. I don't know enough about literature to properly comment on this book -- I know it's a big deal in Modernist circles -- but I will say that it was really satisfying, both in the story and in the way Sheila Watson's POV floats just above the characters, giving glimpses of both what they see and what they don't... but still making you work a bit to flesh out what's going on.
July 25, 2022
The Little Book You Haven’t Read, But Should
The Double Hook by Sheila Watson
McClelland & Stewart, 1959
A good book must be more than just a collection of symbols and meanings, it must hold us and take us with it, taking care in its knowing of us, our conditions, our dreams, and our fears. It must enlighten us, allowing for the progression of our greatest possibilities.
And that is exactly what The Double Hook does.
Media guru Marshal McLuhan and Yale professor and formalist critic Cleanth Brooks both considered it a “literary landmark�.
Jack McClelland said, “It made money for McClelland and Stewart. If it didn’t, we would still consider it one of the best books that it has been our privilege to publish.�
From 1934 to 1936 Sheila Watson taught nine grades in a one-room schoolhouse in Dog Creek, British Columbia, Canada, on the banks of the Fraser River, in the Cariboo district. A place and time that forms the setting of The Double Hook.
“I sank roots,� Watson said, “that I have never been able to disentangle.�
She wrote the book between 1952 and 1954 in Calgary, Alberta and revised it in Paris from 1956 to 1957.
Watson, “It’s about how people are driven, how if they have no art, how if they have no tradition, how if they have no ritual, they are driven in one of two ways, either towards violence or towards insensibility - if they have no mediating rituals which manifest themselves in what I suppose we call art forms." Violence, or insensibility. The reasons why, according to Watson, we need our art forms, and our traditions.
The setting is an unnamed community of only a dozen individuals, divided and isolated by their fears and loneliness, their uncertainties, lost and clinging to the parched banks of a winding river run dry in a hot July drought. A place forgone of its own past and outside connections. Barren of all traditions and rituals.
And so they search. For these rituals. These traditions. For meaningful connections, between themselves, and others. “I’ve seen Ma standing with the lamp by the fence, she said. Holding it up in broad daylight. I’ve seen her standing looking for something even the birds couldn’t see. Something hid from every living thing. I’ve seen her defying. I’ve seen her take her hat off in the sun at noon, baring her head and asking for the sun to strike her. Holding the lamp and looking where there’s nothing to be found. Nothing but dust.�
This is reminiscent of Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, founder of Cynicism, with his lamp held high in daylight looking for one good man. It was also Diogenes, who upon looking over a pile of human bones, was said to say to Alexander the Great, “I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave." A statement also relevant to us, for as Watson says in the book, “One man’s one man and two men or ten men aren’t something else.� It’s not our numbers, Watson is saying, or our stations in life, where we find our true worth.
Margret Atwood, writing on The Double Hook in Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, says, "While alive the old lady's sin had been her refusal to accept life whole, the ‘darkness' along with the ‘light', the cyclical processes of Nature as well as man's structures, houses and straight lines. The ‘something she'd never found' is her own completeness."
In Watson’s narrative, she looks beyond morality tales of Christian redemption and Greek philosophy, reaching back to Native American mythology. “I don’t know about God, William said. Your god sounds only a step from the Indian’s coyotes.� And then again here, the coyote calling, “In my mouth is forgetting. In my darkness is rest.�
In a February 1975 interview with the Capilano Review, Watson said, “When I began the work which became The Double Hook I knew I had to create a total fiction out of experience which was concrete—which defied the clichés imposed on it. I wanted to get rid of reportage, the condescension of omniscience. It wasn't an act of reconstruction—like going back and saying I remember this—no one I ever knew did or said the things which are done and said.� She continued, “I wanted to fuse the dialogue with the context—the reaching towards speech—the speaking out of silence—out of space.�
Sheila Watson’s, The Double Hook, is a near flawless transcending of the historical boundaries of language and the societal conventions of narrative style. Watson marries form and structure with essence—i.e. the intention and inspiration of ‘self�; our intuitive thinking—using emotive imagery to drive the words.
And so why then, has this book not broken out of the confinements of academia and literary studies? Because Watson was a woman writing in the 1950s in British Columbia? Because she never again wrote or published another successful novel? Because it was labeled modernist, the book living outside of accepted commercial standards and forms of that time?
Possibly.
I do know that the book today is still considered a work of modernist writing. And so we must ask ourselves, why? After all these years? And what does that say about us? About writing today? And so, yes, I think we should be holding it up, saying—this is still possible. Find it. Find this and push harder. That point that takes us beyond where all the others have gone. And in doing so, ask, why we are not?
Certainly, it is not too late to come back to the work. Look at Melville and Moby Dick, a perfect example of time (sixty-six years) and our catching up to it, and once we had, what that did for writing.
Read The Double Hook. A book that, although written fifty-nine years ago, still reads today as if it were written tomorrow.
The Double Hook by Sheila Watson
McClelland & Stewart, 1959
A good book must be more than just a collection of symbols and meanings, it must hold us and take us with it, taking care in its knowing of us, our conditions, our dreams, and our fears. It must enlighten us, allowing for the progression of our greatest possibilities.
And that is exactly what The Double Hook does.
Media guru Marshal McLuhan and Yale professor and formalist critic Cleanth Brooks both considered it a “literary landmark�.
Jack McClelland said, “It made money for McClelland and Stewart. If it didn’t, we would still consider it one of the best books that it has been our privilege to publish.�
From 1934 to 1936 Sheila Watson taught nine grades in a one-room schoolhouse in Dog Creek, British Columbia, Canada, on the banks of the Fraser River, in the Cariboo district. A place and time that forms the setting of The Double Hook.
“I sank roots,� Watson said, “that I have never been able to disentangle.�
She wrote the book between 1952 and 1954 in Calgary, Alberta and revised it in Paris from 1956 to 1957.
Watson, “It’s about how people are driven, how if they have no art, how if they have no tradition, how if they have no ritual, they are driven in one of two ways, either towards violence or towards insensibility - if they have no mediating rituals which manifest themselves in what I suppose we call art forms." Violence, or insensibility. The reasons why, according to Watson, we need our art forms, and our traditions.
The setting is an unnamed community of only a dozen individuals, divided and isolated by their fears and loneliness, their uncertainties, lost and clinging to the parched banks of a winding river run dry in a hot July drought. A place forgone of its own past and outside connections. Barren of all traditions and rituals.
And so they search. For these rituals. These traditions. For meaningful connections, between themselves, and others. “I’ve seen Ma standing with the lamp by the fence, she said. Holding it up in broad daylight. I’ve seen her standing looking for something even the birds couldn’t see. Something hid from every living thing. I’ve seen her defying. I’ve seen her take her hat off in the sun at noon, baring her head and asking for the sun to strike her. Holding the lamp and looking where there’s nothing to be found. Nothing but dust.�
This is reminiscent of Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, founder of Cynicism, with his lamp held high in daylight looking for one good man. It was also Diogenes, who upon looking over a pile of human bones, was said to say to Alexander the Great, “I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave." A statement also relevant to us, for as Watson says in the book, “One man’s one man and two men or ten men aren’t something else.� It’s not our numbers, Watson is saying, or our stations in life, where we find our true worth.
Margret Atwood, writing on The Double Hook in Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, says, "While alive the old lady's sin had been her refusal to accept life whole, the ‘darkness' along with the ‘light', the cyclical processes of Nature as well as man's structures, houses and straight lines. The ‘something she'd never found' is her own completeness."
In Watson’s narrative, she looks beyond morality tales of Christian redemption and Greek philosophy, reaching back to Native American mythology. “I don’t know about God, William said. Your god sounds only a step from the Indian’s coyotes.� And then again here, the coyote calling, “In my mouth is forgetting. In my darkness is rest.�
In a February 1975 interview with the Capilano Review, Watson said, “When I began the work which became The Double Hook I knew I had to create a total fiction out of experience which was concrete—which defied the clichés imposed on it. I wanted to get rid of reportage, the condescension of omniscience. It wasn't an act of reconstruction—like going back and saying I remember this—no one I ever knew did or said the things which are done and said.� She continued, “I wanted to fuse the dialogue with the context—the reaching towards speech—the speaking out of silence—out of space.�
Sheila Watson’s, The Double Hook, is a near flawless transcending of the historical boundaries of language and the societal conventions of narrative style. Watson marries form and structure with essence—i.e. the intention and inspiration of ‘self�; our intuitive thinking—using emotive imagery to drive the words.
And so why then, has this book not broken out of the confinements of academia and literary studies? Because Watson was a woman writing in the 1950s in British Columbia? Because she never again wrote or published another successful novel? Because it was labeled modernist, the book living outside of accepted commercial standards and forms of that time?
Possibly.
I do know that the book today is still considered a work of modernist writing. And so we must ask ourselves, why? After all these years? And what does that say about us? About writing today? And so, yes, I think we should be holding it up, saying—this is still possible. Find it. Find this and push harder. That point that takes us beyond where all the others have gone. And in doing so, ask, why we are not?
Certainly, it is not too late to come back to the work. Look at Melville and Moby Dick, a perfect example of time (sixty-six years) and our catching up to it, and once we had, what that did for writing.
Read The Double Hook. A book that, although written fifty-nine years ago, still reads today as if it were written tomorrow.
February 10, 2013
Who would have thought that such a short book would bring such an emotional reaction to me? I was expecting it to be such, but never did I think I would be moved the way I was. I admit that it took me a few chapters to get into the story, and even getting used to the way the author writes (reminds me of Jose Saramago style), but once you get into the swing of things the story flows beautifully. It was not an easy read, you really need to pay attention to what going on, at times I had to re-read certain areas to really get the meaning of the symbolism.
January 8, 2016
I couldn't figure this book out at all. It was a painful read on every page. I hoped it would make sense to me at some point, but it never did. At first I thought maybe it would be good to study this with someone who understands it; however, by the end of it I didn't care.
December 13, 2012
Involves a lot of vague talking that turns out to be about...not much...
April 17, 2020
beautifully written was like reading and putting a puzzle together
August 19, 2019
Harrowing prose, scorching scene-setting. This book evokes the Hobbesian view of the life of man: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I read it over the course of my morning coffee, but had to keep slowing down to take my time with this short book, because it is densely filled despite its apparent brevity. It feels in some ways made for a Canadian literature unit in high school, so drenched in symbolism that it would be hard for a student to fuck up an essay and come away with nothing. I'm surprised I didn't hear more about it during my studies, and I have to wonder why it kept being overlooked. I mentioned not long ago that I'm craving Westerns, and the setting and slowness and hardness of this book scratched that itch, for the moment.
October 19, 2022
Mmmm, not sure what to say about this book because most of the time I only sort of thought I might know what was happening. Really most of this story is only hinted at or suggested. A coyote gives us some beautiful poetry every once in a while, and the inhabitants of a small town wonder where each other are.
It is a really well written book that nothing really happens in.
It is a really well written book that nothing really happens in.
Read
January 13, 2019The whole book reads like a rumour from which you can only infer. To me this is the most terrifyingly beautiful literature.
September 5, 2023
Crime and Punishment, but make it modern and set it in Quesnel.
December 21, 2017
What a strange novel. Short, at 125 pages, spare, and a tight rural setting and small cast of characters. I came across it while reading Nick Mount's "Arrival: The Story of CanLit". It is one of the first of the "CanLit" era novels. Published in 1959, it seems set in the 1920s or 30s; most characters ride horses or wagons, but there is an off-stage car for mail delivery. Mount calls it a western, which it can be seen as, as it is set in BC's Cariboo country, and reads like a western settlers' story. It also has the feeling of a "Canadian Gothic" that could have been set in Appalachia or the Ozarks backcountry. It also has a touch of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" in tone, though not anywhere near the violence. The characters are "hard-bitten", stubborn, and insular, and it is difficult to warm to any of them, but they are interesting.
June 17, 2016
This is the most incomprehensible book I've ever read. Short blurbs skipping all over about perhaps a dozen people in a rural setting. It never tells you what's happening, you have to infer it. I figure an old lady dies, perhaps her daughter and son killed her. The son runs away, beats up another man so bad he goes blind. The daughter sets the house on fire killing herself. Towards the end, we figure out a character called "the girl" is about to give birth. Now I'm going to read the "Afterword" and see if it tells me what this book was actually about. I can't stand books you have to study and interpret to understand them. One star since I managed to make it to the end. ETA - I'm none the wiser since reading the "Afterword" :-0
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