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A Hill for Looking
You are ten years-old. Stretching before you is a long valley. A big lake rolls and curves through the middle. Nestled into the hills is the place where you live. Below, the red-roofed castles of the Ninette, Manitoba sanatorium. High above, is a hill that soars to the clouds. From the top, it seems you are at the beginning of the world. Look with me now. It's a wonderful hill for looking"....
"A Hill for Looking", published in 1982, is Martha Brook's first novel. It is based on a year of her childhood in a rural Canadian hospital setting. "I wanted to evoke the flavour of the people and times of that place.... Dedicated to all the magic and renewal of life's possibilities".
"A Hill for Looking", published in 1982, is Martha Brook's first novel. It is based on a year of her childhood in a rural Canadian hospital setting. "I wanted to evoke the flavour of the people and times of that place.... Dedicated to all the magic and renewal of life's possibilities".
196 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
10 people want to read
About the author
Martha Brooks
28 books51 followersMartha Brooks is an award-winning novelist, playwright and jazz singer whose books have been published in Spain, Italy, Japan, Denmark, England, Germany and Australia, as well as in Canada and the United States. She is a three-time winner of the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book of the Year, as well as the Ruth Schwartz Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Governor General’s Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for her body of work. Letters to Brian is her first book for adult readers. She lives in Winnipeg.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 3, 2018
This is a beautiful book about growing up, and about how souls can reach out and touch one another, about how love can comfort and heal our troubled souls.
It's also an excellent window to the time and place where the author was a little girl. She talks about life in a small town on the prairies, and what it was like when tuberculosis was common, and her life as the daughter of a doctor and a nurse. She explains things in language that children can understand, and gives them things to think about, which is something I consider important.
The lino-cut prints are beautiful, too.
It's also an excellent window to the time and place where the author was a little girl. She talks about life in a small town on the prairies, and what it was like when tuberculosis was common, and her life as the daughter of a doctor and a nurse. She explains things in language that children can understand, and gives them things to think about, which is something I consider important.
The lino-cut prints are beautiful, too.
June 1, 2015
As a child I took a class with Martha Brooks in 1989. It was special, as my first brave move. I was too young to recall anything except Martha’s praise, kindness, gentleness, and sensitive pleasure in beautiful imagery. I see from whence it comes! I felt her personality all the way through “A Hill For Looking”, 1982. I’ve only experienced it now. I saw and snapped up this gorgeous, artful book enhanced by her Dad & Moms’ lino-cut prints.
The story reads almost exactly like “Two Moons In August”, minus its direst drama and with all family members intact. Rather than mould fiction from her life, this book shows us a very memorable year for Martha as a child in 1955. There were some tense moments and scares but unlike fiction; none of it was written dependently upon crime, death, or anything explosive. The pages easily flitted by, readers are engrossed in the sequence that unfolds but it differs uniquely. It is rare to not be bracing for a blow. For once, here is a book for anyone to just enjoy reading; soaring along safely.
Martha lived in a time and place worth describing; memories in a past that was idyllic to Ninette, Manitoba. I know the red-winged blackbirds, the surprise of long-awaited spring flowers, and how our prairie province can storm. I, of a later generation, don’t have chief surgeon and nurse parents who ran a tuberculosis sanatorium village. The little girl was a friend to all staff, sheltered a pregnant dog, and her Grandma’s comfort about a kitten’s life gone too soon lifted me up gratefully. Martha also befriended a healed patient for life. As a child, I too connected with adults who were well past my years. Sometimes maturity or our spark, make friends of any age.
The story reads almost exactly like “Two Moons In August”, minus its direst drama and with all family members intact. Rather than mould fiction from her life, this book shows us a very memorable year for Martha as a child in 1955. There were some tense moments and scares but unlike fiction; none of it was written dependently upon crime, death, or anything explosive. The pages easily flitted by, readers are engrossed in the sequence that unfolds but it differs uniquely. It is rare to not be bracing for a blow. For once, here is a book for anyone to just enjoy reading; soaring along safely.
Martha lived in a time and place worth describing; memories in a past that was idyllic to Ninette, Manitoba. I know the red-winged blackbirds, the surprise of long-awaited spring flowers, and how our prairie province can storm. I, of a later generation, don’t have chief surgeon and nurse parents who ran a tuberculosis sanatorium village. The little girl was a friend to all staff, sheltered a pregnant dog, and her Grandma’s comfort about a kitten’s life gone too soon lifted me up gratefully. Martha also befriended a healed patient for life. As a child, I too connected with adults who were well past my years. Sometimes maturity or our spark, make friends of any age.
February 20, 2015
This is a 3 1/2 really - Martha Brooks' first novel is autobiographical in form - a story about her childhood, one summer in particular, which she spent at the Manitoba Tuberculosis Sanitorium where her father was the Superintendent - it's a novel that includes many of the themes that readers have come to see as a part of the Brooks' experience - a focus on this particular section of south-west Manitoba, small communities and their inhabitants, friendships and relationships, family dynamics - and while not the kind of voice that we have come to expect from her later work, there are lovely glimpses!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews