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Book Reviewed by:Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers the body of an old man, Andrew Woodman, frozen in the ice. One year after the body is discovered, Sylvia Bradley – a withdrawn, sheltered woman whose secret affair with Andrew changed her world forever – decides to learn more about her lover’s mysterious disappearance. She flees to the overwhelming, unfamiliar city of Toronto on a quest to find Jerome. Once she does, they work together to uncover both the secrets of their own pasts and the story of Andrew’s ancestors.
The eagerly anticipated new novel from the best-selling Canadian author of The Stone
Carvers and The Underpainter.
Andrew Woodman stumbles through a snowstorm, slowly losing his strength, his language, and his memories of the once-familiar island landscape around him. When Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers the old man’s body frozen in the ice later that winter, the rich narrative tapestry of
A Map of Glass begins.
One year after Andrew’s body is discovered, Sylvia Bradley – a withdrawn, sheltered woman whose secret affair with Andrew changed her world forever – decides to learn more about her lover’s mysterious disappearance. She flees to the overwhelming, unfamiliar city of Toronto on a quest to find Jerome. Once she does, they work together to uncover both the secrets of their own pasts and the breathtaking story of Andrew’s ancestors.
With her celebrated lyrical prose and haunting imagery, Urquhart’s A Map of
Glass is a skillful exploration of love, loss, and the transitory nature of place.
He is an older man walking in winter. And he knows this. There is white
everywhere and a peculiar, almost acidic smell that those who have passed
through childhood in a northern country associate with new, freshly fallen snow.
He recognizes the smell but cannot bring to mind the word acidic. Snow, walking,
and winter are the best he can come up with – these few words – and then the
word older, which is associated with effort. Effort is what he is making; the
effort to place one foot in front of the other, the effort required to keep
moving, to keep moving toward the island.
It might have been more than an hour ago that he remembered, and then forgot,
the word island. But even now, even though the word for island has gone, he
believes he is walking toward a known place. He has a map of the shoreline in
his brain; its docks and rundown wooden buildings, a few trees grown in the last
century. Does he have the word for trees? Sometimes yes, but mostly no. He is
...
Urquhart continues her interest in unconventional art forms, a theme that has run through two of her previous novels, The Stone Carvers and The Underpainter, with a story that rewards the patient reader...continued
Full Review
(337 words)
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Jane Urquhart was born
in the small northern Ontario mining community of Little Long Lac and spent her later childhood and adolescence in Toronto.
She has published three books of poetry (I'm Walking in the Garden of His
Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, and The Little Flowers of
Madame de Montespan), six novels (The Whirlpool, Changing
Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stonecarvers and A
May of Glass), and a collection of
short fiction (Storm Glass) as well as numerous articles and reviews.
Her books have been published in many countries, including Holland, France,
Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, Australia, and The United States, and have
been translated into several languages.
...
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The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: The power to see, to sense, and to say. ...
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