Spotlight on Urquhart

Beautiful covers.  To the right a wonderful painting by Emma Hesse.

It's been awhile. I hope you are all doing well!
Did I mention we had snow yesterday and may have a bit more tonight? It makes me laugh because what else can you do.   Only in Canada, eh? No, I won't say, pity. So tonight I will, once again, cover the tender annuals that I apparently planted a little too early and hope for the best.

I found this post in my drafts. I don't think it's been posted before and it's time to write about books.

While I haven't read all of Jane Urquhart's novels, I have read several. 
Urquhart's latest novel is written from the third person omniscient point of view and while that view often reveals much, it can also, given the right mood and subject, obscure.  

When I began reading Urquhart's latest novel, my first reaction was O, no. Why? Because of the subject matter, but I soon knew I had to carry on, to discover the how and whys, and in the end to understand as much as can be understood in such an emotional complex world where layers revealed do not necessarily lead to a neatly tied up ending.

Conflict, the only engine than can, moves a story along, but it can also divide. In real life and in novels we have no way of knowing how a tragic event will affect people. In this case, how the characters might react and how those reactions might be played out against the backdrop of Ireland. (A beautiful landscape with an elegiac past that seems to rub off on the novel's characters.)

There's a lot of movement in the story and very near the end of the book we find Tamara stranded in the passengers lounge at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada with only a mural named Flights and Its Allegories (it's really there)  painted by Kenneth Lochhead for immediate company.  Forced to wait in the lounge for three days and three nights, ( yes, a definite biblical reference) imprisoned by smothering dense fog that snuffs out the outside world, Tamara reflects on her relationship with Niall and with the help of the work of art that she's been absorbing, she clearly knows as the fog lifts and the world comes back into focus what to do. 

As I read, I kept wondering why the book was titled Night Stages. This revelation came very near the end, and although I usually do not give much of novel away, it amounted to drowning ones sorrows or sufferings. In fiction and in life, that is generally a dangerous thing to do because it never works. "The best {only} way out," as Robert Frost put it, "is through."

Jane Urquhart's range is panoramic.  Besides novels, she writes poetry, short stories, and she has also written a biography about Lucy Maude Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables.

Enjoy the week...