Some Great Thing? Not So Much
29/03/09 08:10 Filed in: Reading
I'm back. A very difficult week away leaves me tired
and emotionally drained. Not the best circumstances
under which to try to do any writing but at least
I've been reading. I've just started Ross Pennie's
new medical mystery Tainted, which is great
so far, much better than my previous reading
expedition: Lawrence Hill's Some Great
Thing.
I have read and admired Hill's writing for some time, especially his non-fiction work on race relations (for want of a better term this early on a Sunday morning) in Canada. I have used an essay he wrote for Maclean's Magazine in training programs at work and am very much looking forward to obtaining a copy of his recent work, The Book of Negroes.
Published in 1992, Some Great Thing was probably Hill's first or second novel. I received it as a gift recently and, frankly, had never heard of it. Having read it now, I can see why.
This is no great book. In fact, the writing in it is surprisingly poor, in my opinion. The story of a young journalist of south asian background who returns to his hometown, Winnipeg, to take a job with the local daily newspaper and get reacquainted with his race-proud dad, Some Great Thing flounders around for a coherent story line from start to finish and, after failing to find one for 240 pages, simply stops. The characters are stereotypes of the worst kind and Hill literally tells us what to think rather than allowing us to develop our own understanding of the people and events of the book.
It's an early effort, no doubt, but Some Great Thing provides for me more evidence to prove my theory that often the writing itself does not matter in the decision of what gets published. If the subject matter is something the publishers feel will sell, they figure the reader won't know how bad the book is until after he has paid his money and taken the book home to read.
I have read and admired Hill's writing for some time, especially his non-fiction work on race relations (for want of a better term this early on a Sunday morning) in Canada. I have used an essay he wrote for Maclean's Magazine in training programs at work and am very much looking forward to obtaining a copy of his recent work, The Book of Negroes.
Published in 1992, Some Great Thing was probably Hill's first or second novel. I received it as a gift recently and, frankly, had never heard of it. Having read it now, I can see why.
This is no great book. In fact, the writing in it is surprisingly poor, in my opinion. The story of a young journalist of south asian background who returns to his hometown, Winnipeg, to take a job with the local daily newspaper and get reacquainted with his race-proud dad, Some Great Thing flounders around for a coherent story line from start to finish and, after failing to find one for 240 pages, simply stops. The characters are stereotypes of the worst kind and Hill literally tells us what to think rather than allowing us to develop our own understanding of the people and events of the book.
It's an early effort, no doubt, but Some Great Thing provides for me more evidence to prove my theory that often the writing itself does not matter in the decision of what gets published. If the subject matter is something the publishers feel will sell, they figure the reader won't know how bad the book is until after he has paid his money and taken the book home to read.