Book
A map of glass
Record details
- ISBN: 9781596922136 (pbk.)
- ISBN: 1596922133 (pbk.)
-
Physical Description:
print
371 p. 23 x 16 cm. - Edition: Pbk. ed.
- Publisher: San Francisco, CA : MacAdam/Cage, c2006.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Toronto (Ont.) -- Fiction |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Sitka.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 0 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadway Library | PS 8591 R68 M36 2006 (Text) | 33109009062688 | Stacks | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2006 February #2
A year after Andrew Woodman is discovered frozen in ice on remote Timber Island in Lake Ontario, 53-year-old Sylvia Bradley journeys to Toronto to meet artist Jerome McNaughton, who found the body. Sylvia, afflicted with an unnamed "condition" (including not wanting to be touched and having no physical relationship with her husband, a doctor who married her understanding this constraint), tells of being the longtime lover of Woodman, who opened her cloistered life before she lost him to Alzheimer's. More than half of the book tells of historical geographer Woodman's forbears, whose fortunes were tied to the land: great-great-grandfather Joseph Woodman, who built an empire on Timber Island, and particularly Joseph's son, Branwell, who married the orphan whom Marie sent to work at the family home, and Branwell's younger sister, Annabelle. As Sylvia opens Andrew's history and her own to Jerome and his companion, Mira, Jerome reveals his childhood with an alcoholic father, to the point of finding peace. In her typically concise yet lyrical language, Urquhart (The Stone Carvers, 2002) explores the power of memory, history, and place in this story of love and grief at its loss. ((Reviewed February 15, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2006 January #2
Personal and family histories compromised by disability, estrangement and loss are painstakingly intertwined in the prizewinning Canadian author's sixth novel.As she did in her best-known earlier books, The Stone Carvers (2002) and The Underpainter (1997), 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" (Jerome McNaughton) 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 (where his family had built a lumber empire), deep in the throes of Alzheimer's, lurching toward his death. Thereafter, his married lover Sylvia travels to meet with McNaughton (who had found Woodman's body, frozen in an iceberg)âand 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; andâin the novel's best sequenceâthe 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 mastery of 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. Copyright Kirkus 2006 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2006 February #2
This multilayered novel focuses on Sylvia, a reclusive woman who suffers from a condition affecting her ability to relate to others. When a young artist named Jerome discovers the frozen body of Sylvia's lover, Andrew, on a remote island at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, Sylvia conquers her affliction and travels to Toronto to meet Jerome, feeling compelled to speak to him of her life and her relationship with Andrew. The middle third of the novel is Andrew's reconstruction of the history of his timber-merchant family. The book starts slowly and quietly but rewards patient reading; at play here are big themes about the impermanence of everything: relationships, memory, possessions, civilizations, and even the landscape. Urquhart's evocative prose hypnotically weaves together the disparate threads of the story and allows the reader pleasure at discovering the connections. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
[Page 112]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2006 January #3
Urquhart's passion for the past (The Stone Carvers ) and the land (The Underpainters , winner of the Governor General's Award in Canada) are at full poetic play in this intricate story of love, loss and memory. Set in present-day Toronto and in the 19th-century world of rural Ontario timber barons, it opens with the wintry death of Alzheimer's sufferer Andrew, whose body, borne by an ice floe, runs aground on the small Lake Ontario island where artist Jerome McNaughton is seeking inspiration. The story steps back a century, to when Andrew's ancestors, owners of the same island, razed forests to build ships, then it jumps forward a year from the opening scene of Andrew's death, to when Sylvia, Andrew's married lover of 20 years, sets out to meet with Jerome, who discovered Andrew's body, and, through Jerome, to reconnect one last time with Andrew. Meanwhile, Jerome, the relationship-shy adult child of an abusive, alcoholic father, is slowly coming to trust that girlfriend Mira's love for him is real. Urquhart reveals all of their haunted personal histories in the lyrical first and third parts of the novel. But it's in the compact family-saga middle, where a slew of Andrew's memorable forebears take the stage, that this novel's luminous heart truly lies. (Mar.)
[Page 36]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
