Changing Heaven [Hardcover]

Devotees of Emily Brontë will love Changing Heaven, Jane Urquhart's magical novel about the pitfalls of obsessive love, single-minded passion, and tumultuous weather. The book alternates between two narratives, one focusing on Arianna Ether, a turn-of-the-century balloonist/parachutist who perishes in a failed stunt on the English moors and comes to haunt the region with the ghost of Emily Brontë. The second storyline focuses on lonely Ann, an obsessed modern-day Brontë scholar writing a book about the use of weather in Wuthering Heights. When she meets Arthur, who is equally obsessed with the Italian artist Tintoretto, the two become entwined in a destructive love affair, à la Catherine and Heathcliff, dragging them both to despair.

Not surprisingly, weather plays a major role in the novel, mirroring the intensity of the characters' emotions: "She would lie beneath the wheels of a thousand freight trains for twenty minutes of this pleasure, this troubled storm of blindness and forgetting. His mouth, silent now, draws her toward him, his body cracks her open and certainly there is lightning and thunder, the tempest she has always wanted, the hurricane: its power, its devastation." Urquhart's imaginative plot is captivating, and her lyrical prose persuasively conjures up the wild weather of the moors and of the heart, leaving the reader invigorated by the experience. --Leah Eichler   --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Urquhart's second novel (after The Whirlpool ) is a piercingly beautiful tale of obsession, adultery, murder, ghosts and the afterlife, told in sensuous prose. Ann Frear, an Emily Bronte scholar at a Toronto university, has an affair with married art historian Arthur Woodruff, who is obsessed with Tintoretto. When she discovers he's not interested in commitment, Ann flees to England and rents a cottage on the moors, where she imagines Heathcliff and Catherine roaming as in Bronte's Wuthering Heights . An English farmer rescues her from brokenhearted despair, and a final rendezvous with Arthur in Venice seals their doomed romance. This conventional plot is entwined with an otherworldly narrative about Arianna Ether (nee Polly Smith), a parachutist who is in love with treacherous fellow hot-air balloonist Jeremy Unger. When Arianna dies in a crash in 1900, she goes to heaven and meets the ghost of Emily Bronte, an opinionated chatterbox; their decades of spectral conversations eventually move into the present and intersect with Ann's tortured romance. Urquhart has fashioned an intoxicating fiction in which wind, light and weather are palpable presences, mirroring the characters' psychic energies and the moods of Mother Earth.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A curious blend of fantasy and romance, this second novel by Canadian author Urquhart ( The Whirlpool , LJ 4/15/90) clearly aims for magical realism. Ill-fated hot-air balloonist Arianna Esther (nee Polly) loses her life during a stunt and haunts the rest of the novel. Her story is interspersed with that of Ann, teacher and Wuthering Heights fan, who carries on a thwarted clandestine affair with Arthur, a passionate Tintoretto scholar. The ghosts and howling wind add atmosphere but not much substance, and the various sad stories never quite coalesce.
- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

“A brilliant success…Jane Urquhart’s beautifully written book throbs with the storm of wind and passion.”
–Saturday Night

“Piercingly beautiful…an intoxicating fiction…”
–Publishers Weekly

“She is clearly a courageous stylist with a unique vision.”
–Timothy Findley, Books in Canada

“A gripping story of erotic obsession.…”
–Edmonton Journal

“An accomplished novel which boldly explores new ground.…Urquhart’s prose is deft and elegant.”
Literary Review (U.K.)

Two worlds are intertwined in this hauntingly beautiful story as it moves from Toronto to the English moors and to Venice, Italy. The time frame shifts between present and past, linking the lives of a young Brontë scholar (a woman in the throes of a troubled love affair), a turn-of-the-century female balloonist, and an elusive explorer with the ghost – or the memory – of Emily Brontë. Urquhart reveals something about the act of artistic creation, the ways in which stories enter our lives, and about the cyclical nature of love throughout time. This is a novel of darkness and light, of intense weather and inner calm.

“A brilliant success…Jane Urquhart’s beautifully written book throbs with the storm of wind and passion.”
–Saturday Night

“Piercingly beautiful…an intoxicating fiction…”
–Publishers Weekly

“She is clearly a courageous stylist with a unique vision.”
–Timothy Findley, Books in Canada

“A gripping story of erotic obsession.…”
–Edmonton Journal

“An accomplished novel which boldly explores new ground.…Urquhart’s prose is deft and elegant.”
Literary Review (U.K.) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Jane Urquhart is the author of five internationally acclaimed novels: The Whirlpool, which received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France; Changing Heaven; Away, which won the Trillium Award and was a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Underpainter, which won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; and The Stone Carvers, a finalist for the 2001 Giller Prize and for the Governor General's Award for Fiction. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass, and three books of poetry, I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, and The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan (I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace and The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan were published together in 2000 in a one-volume collector’s edition entitled Some Other Garden). Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award, and has been named a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. She was also the 2003 recipient of Alberta's Bob Edwards Award.


Urquhart has received numerous honorary doctorates from Canadian universities and has been writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and, during the winter and spring of 1997, she held the Presidential Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the University of Toronto. She has also given readings and lectures in Canada, Britain, Europe, the U.S.A., and Australia.

Jane Urquhart was born in Little Long Lac, Ontario, and grew up in Toronto. She now lives outside of Toronto.


From the Trade Paperback edition.