Away - Softcover

Urquhart, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140249265 ISBN 13: 9780140249262

Publisher: Penguin, 1995

Synopsis

Esther O'Malley Robertson gazes out at Lake Ontario from her home for perhaps the last time. This house, highly charged with memories and history, is part of a landscape that is now being swallowed by industry. The story of her family's past has its beginnings in the 1840s off the northern coast of Ireland, where a young woman embraced a semiconscious sailor who had washed in with the tide, and later, with her husband and young son, fled the famine for Canada. Jane Urquhart imbues the past with a shimmering clarity as she takes us from the harsh Irish coast to the quarantine stations at Grosse Isle and the barely hospitable land of the Canadian Shield; from the flourishing town of Port Hope to the flooded streets of Montreal; from Ottawa to a large-windowed house at the edge of a Great Lake. The characters who inhabit the world of this novel include Liam O'Malley, a down-to-earth, first-generation Irish-Canadian farmer; his sister, Eileen, whose passionate idealism involves her, unwillingly, in a devastating act of betrayal; the eccentric Sedgewick brothers, Anglo-Irish landlords who tinker with science, art, and poetry; Exodus Crow, an extraordinary individual of mixed native blood; Thomas Doherty, a man known for his wind machines and his ability to charm skunks; Aidan Lanighan, a charismatic Irish nationalist with an obsessive interest in D'Arcy McGee; and Mary O'Malley, whose unusual love of a man leads her to a strange but inevitable fate in a new land. Away is a graceful and moving novel that unites the personal and the political and explores the most private, often darkest corners of our emotions where the things that root us to ourselves endure. Written in sensuous, evocativeprose, Away will confirm Jane Urquhart as one of the most accomplished novelists of our day.

About this title

Review:

"A dazzling novel...written by a major novelist at the height of her considerable powers."-Globe and Mail"One of those novels that moves in and takes over your life....Enjoyable not only for its complexity and subtle characterization, but also for the sheer power of Urquhart's writing....Away is simply a great novel." -Books in Canada"Poignant, lilting and emotionally true....Urquhart [creates] her own spell with language that shimmers....." -Chicago Tribune"Urquhart writes with clear, sensuous poetry." -Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)

From the Publisher:

CO-WINNER OF THE TRILLIUM AWARD (WITH MARGARET ATWOOD'S "THE ROBBER BRIDE")

From the author of THE STONE CARVERS

'An engaging and moving exploration of love: mother-love, romantic love, love of country ... AWAY is a melancholy Irish ballad sund on foreign soil, its words and music all the sweeter for being heard so far away from home'
"Washington Post Book World"

'A great romantic tale - rich in imagery and with language worthy of Emily Bronte and Thomas Hardy. Like these writers, Jane Urquhart is unafraid of words and spends them fearlessly ... beautiful and breathtaking'
Timothy Findley author of "Pilgrim"

'Urquhart writes with clear, sensuous poetry, locating her imagery in the watery Irish coastline and the wilderness forest of upper canada'
"TLS"

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140249265
• ISBN 13: 9780140249262
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368