Customer Reviews

The Stone Carvers

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The idea for this book is fascinating - Urquhart uses as the centrepiece the building of the Canadian war memorial at Vimy Ridge. The history she provides is something that every Canadian should know and is probably unaware of. She uses the war memorial as a symbol of both obsession and redemption.

Urquhart very convincingly conveys the futility of war and depicts how young men go off to war for all the wrong reasons - hoping to fly an airplane, for instance.

Urquhart's strenth as a writer is her ability to paint beautiful pictures with words - her description is unsurpassed. She uses symbols quite well, although at times not subtly enough. In this book, the bird imagery was a little overdone when it came to Tilman. However, she portrays the grand sweep of history while, at the same time, evoking the mood and atmosphere of a small Ontario town.

The weakness in this book is the characterization - for the most part, these characters are one-dimensional and just not believable as real people. For one thing, they are too nice. It is hard to believe that Tilman, on his own since the age of 6 and losing a leg in the war, would not be more bitterly scarred than he is.

Read this book for the beauty of the images and for the history lesson. If you're looking for great characters, you won't find them here. The flaw with this book is that the characters are just not deep enough to adequately deal with the grand themes of obsession and redemption.

As historical fiction, Jane Urquhart's new book "The Stone Carvers" had the same immense impact for me that Taylor Caldwell's "Dear and Glorious Physician" did many years ago. There are several good summaries of the plot above, so I won't go into that here. (I will say that the character of Tilman reminded me so much of Mary in Urquhart's "Away", though!) I've been fortunate to read lots of good Canadian literature recently such as "From Bruised Fell" by Jane Finlay-Young and "A Good House" by Bonnie Burnard. Although I was given "The Stone Carvers" as a gift in November, it was only recently, after finishing "What's Bred in the Bone" by Robertson Davies and wanting more good Canadian literature, that it felt like the time to read this. And it was. Once begun, I could not bear to put this book down each night. The characters' humanness and deeply felt emotions, like those in Urquhart's "Away", got under my skin and I could not wait to find out what happened as the story moved along. This book is intelligent in a way not many are these days, directly addressing the longings of the heart. In my estimation, you can't go wrong reading this book. After reading "Away", I had a deep longing to visit Ireland and Wales; now, having just read "The Stone Carvers", a visit to the monument at Vimy seems inevitable too. I love the quote from the review above about the redemptive nature of art - this book itself proves that to be true. Enjoy!

This book is a pretty easy read, and gets quite enjoyable if you put a bit of imagination into it. I don't know if I find the main character's relationships to one another all that believable, but I think the author does really well at painting symbolisms for the reader to explore meanings and emotions. It isn't a gripping storyline, but makes you want to read more to see how things become resolved. I would recommend this book for romantics and those with a taste for artistic imagery. Those who are looking for a page-turner may not be happy with this one.

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart tells the story of two long-estranged siblings and a visionary 19th Century German priest, and an obsessive sculptor by the name of Walter Allward. Klara Becker (the granddaughter of a master carver), is a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by World War I and the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman. After a number of years Klara and Tilman find themselves involved with Walter Allward's ambitious war memorial at Vimy, France. This highly recommended, deftly abridged, flawlessly recorded, CD audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Nicky Guadagni who does full justice to Jane Urquhart's panoramic novel whose stories and characters sweep across three countries and two centuries.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It brought back memories of my family's experience as immigrants to Canada and the culture we brought with us as artists and art lovers. The story of Vimy Ridge was extraordinary and in my opinioin was one of the most significant parts of the book. Most Canadians know little if anything about this WW1 historic event. This book would be an excellent read for all high school English and History students. As an artist I found the text revealing and meaningful.

If this book were a movie, the first scene might carry the caption June 1934, and the camera would pan across the vast unfinished Vimy Memorial being built near Arras in France. Workers would be chipping away at the imposing base of the structure, painstakingly carving into the white stone the name of one of the more than 11,000 soldiers whose final resting place was unknown... other workers would be on scaffolding or suspended from ropes, five stories high, chiselling statues from the massive pillars as the wind whistles by them.
Then the scene would shift, perhaps the camera itself passes through a cloud, and emerges in the small village of Inzell, Bavaria... and the caption now reads May, 1866. A contented young priest is silently praying to the Creator of all the beauty that surrounds him. Suddenly, as he is distracted by a rare wildflower, he believes he hears the voice of God giving him a very clear directive "Go to Canada. There is much work for you to do there."
My imagination is aided by the fact that this is (almost) exactly how Jane Urquhart begins her book. She reaches back a half century to set up the background for the main timeframe of the novel, which will be the few years just prior to the outbreak of World War I and the 15-20 years following the end of the War. The above mentioned priest (Father Gstir) reluctantly obeyed God's instructions and came to the wild frontier of Upper Canada, where he successfully founded the village of Shoneval, Ontario. Here, he serendipitously meets the son of a Bavarian miller, Joseph Becker, a wood-carver by trade. Father Gstir commissions Joseph to build a church and adorn it with his carvings.
The scene changes yet again, and a generation has passed. The rest of the book, now focuses on Joseph's grand-daughter... the "geist-ridden" spinster Klara Becker. We now see Klara growing up in a relatively peaceful family that does end up having its slightly dysfunctional moments. Grandfather Joseph has his heart set on Klara's younger brother Tilman, hoping that he can make a true carver of the boy. As it turns out, Tilman is an extremely claustrophobic child whose almost daily tendency is to run away from home. It is Klara who is more interested in carrying on the carving tradition and she has obvious skill with the chisel on wood. She inherits Joseph's perfectionism or "a need for order" and creates beautiful works. Klara's parents make a terrible decision one day with regard to confining the boy Tilman, and with the help of Klara, he escapes and seems to run away this time for MAYBE what looks like forever. Meanwhile, Klara experiences her first taste of love with a neighbouring lad by the name of Eamon O'Sullivan, but when war breaks out... (I won't say what happens). During the war years, Klara begins to shut down inside... just as her soul was beginning to spread itself out, it seems to her that it had been unjustly shot down. Her long blonde hair is now in a knot, and she takes on the role of spinster. Meanwhile Klara's parents pass away, and Tilman is out having adventures all of his own, landing a job and his first sense of permanence in the industrial city of Hamilton. Tilman the soldier is himself "wounded out" of the War, and over a decade passes before he hobbles back to visit his sister. This wonderful latter half of the book (appropriately entitled "The Monument") is all about the rebirth of dreams, the following of convictions, the importance of believing in a cause... the beauty of using our creative energy to honor others. It is clear at the end of the book that it is never too late for us to taste and drink of the joys of living. Brother and sister end up across the Atlantic, at the very plot of ground that represents the greatest loss of each of their lives... and both receive an individual healing in a way that neither could have ever imagined for themselves. At a recent reading I attended, the author was asked what this book was about. She replied, "It is about the redemptive nature of art."
Perhaps it would be fitting in the last scene of the movie of this book if the camera panned across the completed monument, now clear of all human presence... the camera again passes through a cloud, only this time it does not ever emerge at all... and the narrator says "And so the impossible happens as a result of whims that turn into obsessions." And again, my imagination is indebted to the author who put this sentence on the last page of her book.

Jane carved this book, as it builds towards its moving climax slowly - very slowly at times. A great history lesson and in a sense, history within history. The Stone Carvers reveals one of what surely are a thousand small but significant tales woven deeply within the larger conflict of World War One. Very satisfying.

Maybe it was because of the authors reputation, but I expected more from the book. The book held my interest with its recurring themes but somehow that wasn't enough. Many parts of the book lost my interest and I didn't enjoy most of the characters.

Klara Becker decided to live like a spinster. Although still young, she doesn't expect any more from life: tending the animals on her inherited farm, sewing clothes for the villagers to earn a little extra money, and burying the memories of love and loss, until... She is unquestionably Jane Urquhart's heroine in this wonderfully rich and absorbing novel about deep emotions, drive and determination. Set in the nineteen thirties, against the continuing aftermath of the most devastating historical event of the early twentieth century, World War I, the author by concentrating on intimate portraits of her protagonists brings to life the personal challenges ordinary people faced during these difficult times.

The novel is structured into three distinct sections, focusing in turn on Klara, her brother Tilman and the construction of the Canadian War Memorial in Vimy, northern France. Klara's character comes to life primarily through her own observations and inner reflections. The depth of her emotional being that stands in sharp contrast to her external "spinster" persona, is exquisitely evoked in Urquhart's lyrical language. The following quote gives a taste of it: "When one embraces a moment of rapture from the past, either by trying to reclaim it or by refusing to let it go, how can its brightness not tarnish, turn grey with longing and sorrow, until the wild spell of the remembered interlude is lost altogether and the memory of sadness claims its rightful place in the mind?..."

In this section, the narrative moves easily between the thirties and the late eighteen eighties when Klara's grandfather, master woodcarver Joseph Becker, immigrated from Bavaria to southwestern Ontario in search for a new life. He settled in the village of Shonegal where he found work with Father Gstir's ambitious church project for his small Catholic German congregation. Shoneval remained the centre of Klara's world; wood carving the craft to be passed on through the generations. Tilman, Klara's older brother, less interested in wood carving than in following the migrating birds, leaves home at a young age. Klara, on the other hand, quietly imitated her grandfather until she was ready to embark on her own carving project. Urquhart draws on the close interaction between her heroine and her work in progress - the statue of an abbess - to reveal the different emotional stages Klara experienced. Joseph could describe the changes he saw in the abbess's face, yet only guessing the source for his granddaughter's inner upheavals.

The third section of the novel draws the different threads of the story together and moves it to a different, yet intensely compelling level. The author provides an almost intimate account of the Canadian Vimy Memorial and the last stages of the work in progress, personalizing the direct involvement of its architect, Canadian Walter Allward and of the many skilled carvers implementing his dream. Her description of the enormous Monument, built on the actual battle field, and erected in memory of the many thousands of Canadian soldiers who perished in this decisive battle, leaves no doubt as to its impact on anybody seeing it. Urquhart's lyrical language evokes the eerie atmosphere that surrounds the carvers working high up on fragile platforms on either of the white limestone pylons that form the centre of the monument. The passages describing the intricate work of stone carvers whether swinging on ropes high up or working on engraving the thousands of names of the missing are some of the most memorable of the novel. The author imagines the stone carvers' daily existence: carving from dawn to dusk; living and breathing the atmosphere of the land, still saturated with the evidence of the war. For some, like for Klara and Tilman, the work is a release from the past, a new beginning that is grounded in forgiveness, closure and redemption. Not surprisingly, Urquhart, asked about what the novel was about, responded: "it is about the redemptive nature of art". Yes, indeed.

By bringing the different threads of the novel together around the Vimy memorial, Urquhart also achieves an admirable harmonization between the intimately imagined lives of her characters and the broader historical reality. Shonegal, for example, is based on the town of Formosa, the actual Father Gstir built the enormous church up on the hill as described in the novel. The imposing Vimy Monument continues to be well known to Canadians of all generations; Walter Allward, almost forgotten since as the architect of the Monument, has been given a well-deserved tribute in Urquhart's novel. [Friederike Knabe]

Move over Margaret Atwood, I think we found a real female Canadian writer. I am thrilled to say this book is such a breath of fresh air in the Canadian war literature landscape! The way Urquhart interweaves Ontario history with the historical narrative of World War One is just incredible, telling stories that have not been told in this form before.

The love story between Eamon and Klara is wonderful. [...].

What I love most about this book is the simplicity with which the story of war is told. I don't think I've ever read anything like it and I don't think I will for a long while. If you're interested in the story of Vimy Ridge and the young men lost there, read this book.