MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - New Leaf August 2018 Discussion • The Great Halifax Explosion by John U. Bacon

bfisher · 08-15-2018, 08:50 PM

When I was in high school, I read Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan as my first foray into CanLit.

Published in 1941, Barometer Rising is a romantic novel, with the backdrop of the Halifax Explosion. It sucks as a romance; the first character to be introduced is Penny, who is waiting for her lover to return from the war - MacLennan studied the classics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

There are a few painful bits - the great lone land motif, trainloads of grain from the prairies, etc., which are MacLennan's tentative efforts at a national novel. However, the second half of the novel, which is about the explosion and its aftermath, works much better. MacLennan survived the explosion as a 10 year old, and he had personal access to many other survivors, so he wrote with intimate knowledge.

08-15-2018, 08:50 PM	#11
bfisher Wizard Posts: 1,638 Karma: 28483498 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Ottawa Canada Device: Sony PRS-T3, Galaxy (Aldiko, Kobo app)	When I was in high school, I read Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan as my first foray into CanLit. Published in 1941, Barometer Rising is a romantic novel, with the backdrop of the Halifax Explosion. It sucks as a romance; the first character to be introduced is Penny, who is waiting for her lover to return from the war - MacLennan studied the classics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. There are a few painful bits - the great lone land motif, trainloads of grain from the prairies, etc., which are MacLennan's tentative efforts at a national novel. However, the second half of the novel, which is about the explosion and its aftermath, works much better. MacLennan survived the explosion as a 10 year old, and he had personal access to many other survivors, so he wrote with intimate knowledge.