Customer Reviews

A Map of Glass

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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.

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.
I also recommend'The Quest' by George Kostantinos.

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....

... even if it is just a trace - all but invisible - it is there for those willing to look hard enough." Like her protagonists, Jane Urquhart delights in following those traces in a landscape. Southern Ontario, an important backdrop in her previous, exquisite novel, The Stone Carvers, is explored here primarily as an essential part of a family history. Going back some hundred years, "Timber Island" is the intricate setting for this profound and brilliantly developed multi-faceted novel that explores a lot more, of course, than the interdependence between human beings and their land.

The central figure providing the glue, so to say, for the story's different threads is Sylvia, middle-aged and apparently suffering from a "condition" that, while not defined, suggests some form of autism. Since childhood she has been more comfortable with objects rather than people, preferring to touch their permanent and solid surfaces. The unpredictability and change that human beings represent made her withdraw, until... Nevertheless, she has married her doctor who had moved into the family home, taking over her father's surgery and the gentle and considerate treatment of the "patient". Under his guidance, Sylvia slowly learns to move cautiously beyond her familiar territory into the wider neighbourhood, concentrating on establishing clear landmarks for herself. During one of these outings, she meets Andrew, a landscape and historical geographer, a man "who walked into the past", who has been researching his family history. A secret friendship ensues that lasts on and off for many years, until he disappears from her life.

The novel opens with Andrew, suffering from Alzheimer's, attempting to return to the island where his forbears had created their timber business. This is one of the most delicate and evocatively beautiful passages in the book. "...The palms of his gloved hands are open to the sky as if he were silently requesting that the world come back to him, that the broken connections of heart and mind be mended, that language and the knowledge of a cherished place re-enter his consciousness..." While there are many other sections of moving lyricism and rich imagery, making reading Urquhart's prose such a delight, this first passage draws the reader right into the mysterious connections between Andrew, Sylvia and a young, "conceptual artist", Jerome. Jerome had found Andrew's body, frozen in ice during a visit to the now abandoned island. In his art he attempts to capture civilization debris, remnants of earlier human habitation. To some extent Jerome symbolizes Urquhart's own exploration of Robert Smithson's aesthetics. The novel's title is derived from Smithson's sculpture "Map of Broken Glass"; Smithson's contention that "the artist seeks.... the fiction that reality will sooner or later imitate" can be interpreted as one of the novel's underlying motives.

Sylvia, having learned of Andrew's death, seeks out Jerome, who she feels is holding "the end of Andrew's story... in a way, the last thing he told me". For the same reason, Sylvia feels compelled to share her life story, reluctantly at first, with this young stranger and finds an increasingly attentive listener. Jerome has his own demons to battle and, maybe, they can both help each other at some point.

Embedded in the present-day narrative, Andrew's journals form the middle section of the novel. They stand on their own and delve into the fascinating saga of his great-great grandfather, one of the early timber barons in Southern Ontario, and three generations of his offspring. Urquhart brings out Andrew's distinct voice: his description of the family's changing fortunes and long-term destiny is completely captivating. Their reign over the island leaves the land dramatically altered with consequences far beyond the landscape: symbolic for the impact of destroying its natural beauty and for the family's greed is the image of their fancy hotel, now almost totally submerged in sand. As a counterbalance to those driven solely by profit, there are those with more redeeming features, such as family values and, in particular, artistic talent and expression.

Art and artists always play an important role in Urquhart's novels. Sylvia is an artist of sorts: she creates tactile maps for her blind friend Julia. Maps are important to her as they establish some form of solidity and permanency. Her own maps reflect her very personal sense of landscapes, shapes and markers that she shares with her friend. Julia asked her once, how she could be sure that what she sees is what other people see. Maybe a more profound question than intended, it turns out as we, the readers, are encouraged to follow the fluid lines between her imagination and reality. Sylvia's version of her life's story, of her relationship with Andrew, with her husband, may not match the one the reader is being led to believe. Or is it? And, as Jerome muses: "maybe landscape -- place -- makes people more knowable. Or it did, in the past". This is a novel to absorb slowly, to ponder and to be carried away into different mental and real landscapes, rich in symbolism and breathtakingly beautiful at times. [Friederike Knabe]