Customer Reviews

Sanctuary Line

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I am a die-hard Urquhart fan so I hung in there despite being disappointed in the distance I felt from the characters and the meandering plot (much of which seemed to have little to no effect on either character or plot development; in my opinion, it was just back story that needed to be edited out). However, by the end, the story comes together (albeit a little too late) and I felt engaged with two of the characters. Oddly, I felt least connected to the uncle which permeates each page and the most connected to a character that isn't even introduced until the last pages, the character that is the reason for the occasional second-person point of view (which was interesting from a literature perspective but annoying from a personal one). An important part of the novel, for me, was Urquhart's apt and sad description of the disappearance of "local" orchards/farms from Southwestern Ontario. I live on Lake Huron close to Arkona which had a plethora of thriving orchards just twenty years ago, most of which are now gone. It saddens me that most of the tree fruit I buy now is shipped from all over the world. The thirty minute drive to Arkona every summer for cherries and every fall for bushels of freshly picked apples was one of my greatest pleasures. I found myself quite dispirited for a couple of days over the "progress" we've made. So, there's no doubt that Urquhard knows how to affect her readers.

this book is beaurifully written with wonderful descrip;tive phrases but the story line is very weak. The description of Southwestern Ontario is beautiful and accurate from the butterflies to the lake to surrounding farms and forests. This would be the reason to read this book. I have read most of this author's work but this is not her best effort

This book is Urquhart at the top of her game as a story teller with extraordinary writing skills. She composes her story like a master painter getting the right balance of composition, texture and colour complexities. Set in rural south western Ontario the landscape is home to several generations of the Butler family who farm their land and grow their families. The past is always present in this setting as the twenty-first century generation of the family weave in and out of relationships with themselves, the community and the "outsider" who come every summer to work on the farm. The story has mystery, drama, humour and questions about the meaning of lifes lived on the edge of love, hate and forgiveness. A. MacLean

"...The cultivated landscape of this farm has decayed so completely now, it is difficult to believe that the fields and orchards ever existed outside my own memories, my own imagination... ". With these opening lines Liz Crane, forty-year old entomologist and the central voice in Jane Urquhart's new, engrossing and most personal novel invites us into her world and into her mind. Having recently returned to the old Butler homestead and studying monarch butterfly behaviour at the nearby Sanctuary Research Centre, Liz feels she needs to reconnect with all that is familiar from the past. She let's her mind wander back to the fun-filled summers of her childhood, spent amongst her cousins and the rest of the extended family. Important questions have remained since then about the whereabouts of some and she hopes that by going through the remnants of memorabilia kept in the farmhouse she will shed some light on these.

Much of the story takes place in the nineteen eighties at the Butler family farm on the northern, Canadian, shore of Lake Erie, a landscape that is depicted with detailed and loving attention and that is somewhat familiar to readers of Urquhart's previous novels. She and many of her characters feel grounded there. Liz, the city girl is the enthusiastic "summer cousin" immersed in play and exploration, especially with her cousin Mandy. Mandy and her father Stanley, the head of the Butler clan, are often on Liz's mind now in her ruminations about the past. Mandy, the poetry lover turned military officer, was killed on duty in Afghanistan not long ago, and Stan, the life-loving, "innovative" farmer disappeared without a trace one day, twenty years earlier. Memories also take her back to Teo, the Mexican boy, whom she met over several summers at the farm where his mother and other Mexicans were working. They had become close friends, until... "There is no one, no one left. I live in a landscape where absence confronts me daily," she reflects, and later on: "Hardly ever has memory been good for people ..."

Multi-generational intriguing family sagas, reaching back in time to Irish immigration to North America, are one of Urquhart's familiar themes. In SANCTUARY LINE the primary family storyteller is uncle Stan, who captures Liz's attention with his absorbing tales of the family's forbearers, the "Great-greats". His recounting of the past is not linear and, similarly, Liz's mind is wandering in and out of memory snippets, the history of the Butlers is revealed in small, apparently disconnected, summer installments. Central to the family traditions, beginning in Ireland, is "bifurcation": between farmers and lighthouse keepers, and in North America between those settlers on the southern shore of Lake Erie and those on the northern side. Family dramas and politics have come into play resulting, finally, in peaceful coexistence and more between the two branches. Still now, Liz keeps wondering how much of Stan's rich lore was based on fact and how much a construction of his creative mind, deliberately invented for the benefit of the children. Mystery and questions remain as far as the family saga is concerned.

Having read most of Urquhart's previous novels and enjoyed her insightful realization of engaging characters and her often lyrical and vivid evocation of the beautiful and diverse landscapes in Southern Ontario, SANCTUARY LINE feels quite familiar in that respect. Yet, for this novel, the author has taken a completely new, and for me, more intimate approach to story telling. Creating an authentic first person voice, one that allows the reader to feel like an intimate companion to Liz, who, in turn, appears to invite us to "look out the window" with her into her young girl's persona and life. With the hindsight and distance of a mature person, yet filled with deep emotion and unresolved questions, she brings the past to life for her and our benefit. While we might feel addressed directly in that first line and on and off throughout the novel, the question sneaks up on us as to whether we really are the intended audience.

By allowing Liz's memories to wander effortlessly - and seemingly randomly - between present and past, yet also subtly linking the two by dropping clues and small hints to future situations, Urquhart, in fact, spins a beautifully crafted delicate, yet sturdy, and increasingly tightly structured story web. It captures scattered shards of Liz's memory, splinters from Stan's imaginative and sometimes wild family stories, and builds on strong connecting threads of love and friendship, happiness and loss. It is up to the reader to carefully assemble the numerous and recurring references to individuals and relationships that will be revisited again and again, revealing a bit more each time until they are eventually explained.

Monarchs appear regularly every summer on the Butler farm and the symbolism of their migratory behaviour is evident to Liz, who monitors their behaviour. She understands their genetically imprinted sense of orientation and interconnectedness through several generations to return to their summer breeding grounds. In her ruminations she returns, from time to time, to admire their strengths as a swarm and to recognize their fragility if migration patterns are changing or one butterfly is straying from the predetermined path. The parallels to her understanding of her family and human behaviour in general are evident. Sometimes, though, the connections to the story web seem arbitrarily tenuous and appear to get lost in the midst of everything else. [Friederike Knabe]

Consider memory. At any time, a person's mind potentially holds the sum total of all her experience, though she may not be able to access all of it. She may have forgotten details, until reminded by revisiting a place or picking up a keepsake. There may be memories too painful to recall, until the recounting of simpler things clears a pathway to them. There may be things that she cannot understand until the light of maturity suddenly reveals their meaning. Unlike a tale told chronologically, a novel based on memory contains its entire story in outline from the first pages on -- although it remains unclear in detail, emotion, and significance until we have lived long enough in the narrator's mind to explore her past from within. And Jane Urquhart, in the gradual unspooling of memory that is essence of her latest novel, allows us to inhabit the mind of Liz Crane, her protagonist and narrator, as though it were our own.

Liz is an entomologist, working at a sanctuary situated on a promontory of the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. She studies the Monarch butterfly, which migrates annually from Canada to Mexico and back again, the task being spread between several generations, dying so that others may live. The theme of migration is strongly present in the book. Her uncle's orchard farm, where Liz used to spend her summers, was worked each year by families flown in from Mexico. Her own family, the Butlers, emigrated from Ireland, settling on both the American and Canadian sides of the lake; the novel is full of their stories. Her uncle himself was given to unexplained disappearances, and one year he simply walked out of their lives for good. More recently, her cousin Mandy, a senior officer in the Canadian army, spent several years in Afghanistan, dying there shortly before the book opens. There are other deaths also that will emerge as the memories come into focus, but there is also life, love, and friendship, and golden echoes of those endless summer evenings of childhood in the country.

The three previous novels by Jane Urquhart that I have read (in ascending order of personal preference: THE STONE CARVERS, AWAY, and A MAP OF GLASS) have all been panoramic stories told chronologically. SANCTUARY LINE is different in being intimate, personal, and reflective, the same events coming back again and again, growing in meaning with each telling. Urquhart has always been a poet, even in her prose, but only this book has the structure of poetry itself. Poetry, which was Mandy's passion, actually plays a large part in it, with well-placed quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson (whose greatness I cannot see) and Emily Dickinson (whom Urquhart makes me appreciate as never before). The prevailing poetic moods are pastoral and elegy -- Urquhart's love of the country and lament for its disappearance; in this, she very much echoes the theme of her earlier books, especially A MAP OF GLASS. But she very much needs these local roots. When Mandy goes to Afghanistan, she is in an utterly different world that Urquhart does not entirely manage to connect to her own. One of the earliest scenes in the book shows Mandy's hearse being driven along Canadian highways as policemen, firemen, and members of the public gather on overpasses. It is a hero's return, a poignant image of loss and homecoming. But not as hopeful as that of the Monarchs -- mariposas there, butterflies here -- flying to and fro between Mexico and Canada, and converting the trees on which they land into tongues of living flame.

Jane Urquhart's new novel, "Sanctuary Line", is a brilliant work of art. It is both moving and profound. What was - is the multi-layered architect of - what is.
Urquhart unfurls the past of one family through a young woman's memories which float, like Monarchs, into her present and her place.
Everyone should read this magnificent and magical book.

I found this the best description of the turmoil of being a teenager I have found. It was also an excellent review of our ancestors/families and how their actions and words shape us. The family struggles and their relation to the life cycle of the Monarch butterflies was interesting. This is a book I will be recommending to my friends.

Although not Urquhart's best novel, I enjoyed Sanctuary Line for memories it brought back of living in Essex County. The writer presents an interesting mix of the history of farming along the shore of Lake Erie mixed with contemporary Canadian themes, especially our military's involvement in Afghanistan.