Every year, a list of books is chosen to be a part of the Red Maple, Blue Spruce, Silver Birch, etc. Our Grade 9 class was going to read books from the White Pine, and after much despair and resistance, I finally chose a small book that I could finish quickly- The Landing.
I myself have never enjoyed the selections that The Forest of Reading has chosen. The stories are often bland, storytelling methods are dull, and characters uninteresting. The Landing, unsurprisingly, follows this pattern.
The book opens up with an orchestra and the worst reaction to music ever. Not even a chapter into the book and I am already wishing I never picked the book up.
I don't want to sound anti-literature, I can enjoy reading, I just need a good book. The opening chapter is, in my opinion, one of the most important chapters in the book. It needs to draw you into the book, not push you away from it.
I ignored this beginning, and kept reading the rest of the book. It turns out that the story is based in a small cottage village in Muskoka, and the protagonist is a 16 year old fiddle player. The boy lives with his uncle and mother, who constantly complain that it's impossible to leave their town. They do odd jobs for rich cottagers, and get paid half a dollar a day. Heartbreaking.
Then their fate changes when a rich cottager comes in and asks them to fix a cottage for her. You can already sense the plot twist. Ready? They fix the cottage! She pays Ben (the fiddle player) a couple dollars a day to complete grueling tasks, like painting the walls and fixing windows. Eventually she plays music on a record player, which makes Ben go crazy (all he talks about from this point on is her music). The topic of Ben's fiddle playing comes up, and again, the topic of being stuck in cottage land appears.
A couple chapters (all about Ben fixing the cottage) later, the rich cottager decides to throw a party, and Ben considers playing the fiddle for them (I'm sorry, I meant violin. Apparently he calls it this halfway through). The party arrives, and Ben mixes drinks and plays music. Square dancing music (he really should call it a fiddle if that's the genre he is going to play).
After the party, Ben gets drunk, and throws up in his families barn. Three days later, the drinking age law was established (you can smell the sarcasm). After his hangover the next day, Ben sits at home contemplating life and all it doesn't have to offer him (back to that topic again).
Ya da ya da ya da. A couple chapters (filled to the brim with whining from the main characters) later, Ben and his uncle get on a boat to go fix a cottage. Then a wave knocks over the boat, and in a Titanic-esque format (the boat capsizes then turns on it's port side to slowly sink in the water. Do you need a picture to see the resemblence? Ben's uncle ends up dieing, which again, uses a film cliché.
"Ben, go on without me."
Go on without him? He's on a sinking boat, where can he go?
When he returns home, Ben's mom starts packing to leave for Toronto. Remember when I told you how they complained how it was impossible to leave. It looks like the only hard part about leaving the landing was packing their stuff.
If your still reading this, I congratulate you. You have read a summary of The Landing with sarcastic commentary. If you simply skipped ahead to this final paragraph, I'll summarize The Landing quickly for you:
-Dylan
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