By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

this book is my bible and comfort, its a shame it is so often overlooked

The ultimate in purple passionate prose by a love-sick woman. It might be too purple and passionate for some. A lot of agonizing guilt over the fact that her lover was married (in fact the real life George Barker was married many times so she might have been in doubt which wife to have the agonizing guilt about). The basic story is of her meeting the British poet George Barker in California (where he was trying to stay to sit out the Second World War) and travelling across America to New York with him. He gets into jail and hospital and eventually has to return to England. It becomes more coherent if you read Rosemary Sullivan's "By Heart" which is a biography of Elizabeth Smart. It's interesting to read of her later friendly contacts with Barker and his last wife. There's also a biography of George Barker by Robert Fraser which I haven't seen yet.

In my short life I have read numerous books, some I read with the detachment they deserved and some I perused with interest. This novel had me enthralled from the first sentence. It took three hours to read it and even though it is a book that you need to read over and over, the sheer poetic beauty is recognisable straight away. I strongly believe that this is the most most powerful story I have ever read, and yet it doesn't receive the recognition that it truly deserves. This book of poetic prose tells the story of a woman's love affair with a married man, the joy and despair it brings her, but mainly it delves deeply into the magic of love and how, even for just the short amount of time that it lasts it becomes everything that this young woman lives for. I strongly recommend this book to those who need depth and soul.

Simply breathtaking - a unique account in magical prose poetry of all consuming love, which you will return to again and again. Almost too painfully visceral at times, snapshots of sheer beauty leap out of the page as you ride the non-stop vertical drop on the rollercoaster of their relationship - not for the faint or hard hearted.

Scathing, deeply poetic rant of obssessive love forced into obssessive hate. Deep and lasting, based on the author's actual experiences.