Synopses & Reviews
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
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 Generals 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 collectors edition entitled
Some Other Garden). Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award, and has been named a Chevalier dans lOrdre 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.