Book Review: The Double Hook

The Double Hook by Sheila Watson

The Double Hook is a masterpiece of modernist Canadian fiction. Ostensibly set in 1930s British Columbia interior, it transcends those spatial and temporal limitations. The back cover describes it thusly as "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 human significance.

In his afterword, F.T. Flahiff quotes Watson's mentor Frederick M. Salter as describing it as a book that will confound most readers (and reviewers) who gallop rather than read and whose pace courts bewilderment and frustration for readers confronted by its simultaneously spare and dense prose. As one of those readers who gallops (literally a gallop as I tend to walk while I read), I still recognize that there is something pure and perfect and so seminally Canadian about her work. Its characters are never truly defined as either native or European of ancestry yet somehow succeed at being applicable to both and the succinct appearances of Coyote adds both mythical and thematic resonance.

Still one reading keeps it pedestaled as something to be admired rather than loved. Rather it requires absolute attention and future readings over the quick clip of simple consumption. Absolutely recommended.