The Meeting Point
The Toronto Trilogy
- Publisher
- Knopf Canada
- Initial publish date
- Sep 1998
- Category
- Cultural Heritage, Historical, City Life
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780676971606
- Publish Date
- Sep 1998
- List Price
- $27.00
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Description
This is the first book in Austin Clarke’s acclaimed trilogy about a group of West Indian domestics, their friends, lovers, spouses and employers living in Toronto. In rich, exuberant language, the novel illuminates the world of Bernice Leach, a Barbadian woman, working in the infamous ‘Canadian Domestic Scheme’ as a live-in maid. Oddly situated in the employ of the Burrmanns, a wealthy Jewish-Canadian couple, Bernice becomes privy to some household secrets which serve both she and her friend Dots with cause for amusement and outrage. And when Bernice’s sister Estelle comes over, apparently on holiday from Barbados, her stay has first comic, then tragic results.
The Meeting Point is a poignant study of the clashes, tensions and sheer comedy resulting from the confrontation of opposing lifestyles and cultures. Set in the 1950s, the novel brilliantly captures a portrait of a vital city as a it faces, for the first time, a significant black immigrant presence upon its landscape.
“Masterful.”
—The New York Times
“A beautiful, comic, innovative, spellbinding and tragic novel. . . . A treat from beginning to end.”
—The Boston Globe
“Zings with life [and] a humorous appreciation of the injustices of today’s world.”
—St. Catherine’s Standard
About the author
Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe in 2002, Austin Clarke has published ten novels, six short story collections, and three memoirs in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Holland. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in his Toronto Trilogy about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. The Origin of Waves won the Rogers Communications Writers’ Development Trust Prize for Fiction in 1997. In 1999, his ninth novel,The Question, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. In 2003 he had a private audience with Queen Elisabeth in honour of his Commonwealth Prize for his tenth novel, The Polished Hoe. In 1992 Austin Clarke was honored with a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and in 1997, Frontier College granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998 he was invested with the Order of Canada, and he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing.
Editorial Reviews
"A beautiful, comic, innovative, spellbinding and tragic novel. . . . A treat from beginning to end." —Boston Globe
Other titles by
The Polished Hoe
20th Anniversary Edition
When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks
The Austin Clarke Library
'Membering / The Polished Hoe / Choosing His Coffin
’Membering
In Your Crib
More
A Novel
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack
A Memoir
Where The Sun Shines Best
Collected Poems: Austin Clarke
