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Urquhart's writing is extremely resonant and always echoes her larger themes: "How wonderful the snow was; every change of direction, each whim, even the compulsion of hunger was marked on its surface, like memory, for a brief season." Her writing is also highly cerebral--little happens in this novel but there is an enormous quantity of thoughtful reflection. The depiction of the Woodman past, with its near-mythical characters and its grand hotel invaded by sand, is so deeply realized that the present feels amorphous in contrast, its characters infused with the ambiguity of modernism. In the end, however, Urquhart shows how this makes perfect sense for, with profound subtlety, she raises a startling question: In the face of shocking change--in landscapes, in memories that fade to nothing, even in the complete dissolution of the human personality in Alzheimer's--what can still be called reality? Urquhart is a subtle master at work. --Mark Frutkin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book with knock-out characterizations,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Map of Glass (Hardcover)
A Map of Glass is a wonderful book, filled with extraordinary characterizations. In a way it is the antithesis to The Stone Carvers. Where The Stone Carvers dealt with changing the immutable, A Map of Glass is about the need to confront that which is ever-changing and ultimately ephemeral. I highly recommend it.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Urquhart explores the psyches and sensibilities of people,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Map of Glass (Hardcover)
As she did in her earlier books, The Stone Carvers, and The Underpainter, Urquhart explores the psyches and sensibilities of people committed to unconventional forms of art. In this case, they are aging landscape geographer Andrew Woodman; a young "earth artist" who attempts to capture in photographs Ontario's vanishing past; and bereaved protagonist Sylvia Bradley, victim of a debilitating borderline autistic "condition," whose fear of imprecision and chaos takes the form of an obsession with maps. A splendid opening scene depicts Andrew en route to remote Timber Island, deep in the throes of Alzheimer's, lurching toward his death. Thereafter, his married lover Sylvia travels to meet with McNaughton and the process of unearthing the past and its secrets begins. The subjects explored are Jerome's search for permanence through art, in his failed love life and in a world he perceives vulnerable to continual change and decay; Sylvia's insular childhood, comfortable marriage to an older man whom she doesn't love and "awakening" in her relationship with Andrew; and-in the novel's best sequence-the story of the Woodman family. They're a cut above Faulkner's Snopeses: a clan of avaricious power-seekers, from whom Andrew had spent his life attempting escape. This is a load for any novelist to handle, and Urquhart achieves only mixed success. She's a wonderful scene-painter with an impressive masteryof the details of farm and village life. But her story flies in too many directions, and is hamstrung by appallingly portentous, theme-driven dialogue. At her best, this writer commands an impressive range of varied literary skills. But here, simpler would have been better.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Skip this...unless you enjoy yawning....,
By
This review is from: A Map of Glass (Paperback)
My book club did this novel. All I can say is: yawn. Does this woman know anything about writing fiction? Answer: no. If you want to venture into Canadian fiction, read Clara Callan or Fall on Your Knees....something with spark.....this sad novel was probably one of the top three WORST novels I have ever read....
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