The Night Stages

May 11, 2015
Urquhart (Sanctuary Line) delivers an impressionistic and forlorn postwar romance. Framed by the career of an ingenious real-life artist named Kenneth, the novel emulates an actual mural of his, Gander Airport’s Flight and Its Allegories. But only gradually is Kenneth’s mural connected to the recollections of an auxiliary pilot named Tamara and the life she lived in rural Ireland with her lover, the meteorologist Niall and his tortured brother, Kieran. As Tamara and Niall live a life of relative calm punctuated by the gorgeously evoked Irish landscape and their memories of the war, Kieran becomes a bicycle racer and, following a prestigious race, disappears completely. Niall blames himself and undertakes a fruitless search for his brother. But Tamara understands Kieran’s love of speed better than she admits, and even as she prepares to leave Ireland, a love triangle develops. Urquhart’s evocative novel may not exactly break new ground, but passages rich with the aura of distant love make this novel a lovely dream of emotional landscapes. Kieran, Tamara, and Niall are well drawn, never succumbing to stereotype or symbolic shorthand—but the long chapters detailing Kenneth’s labors on his mural make for laborious reading and come off as only incidentally connected to the central love story. For readers willing to surrender to the mood, this stands as an exemplar of both Canadian and Irish literature.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Grounded by fog during a layover, a woman heading to New York recalls growing up in wartime England and the lover she has just left in Ireland in this thoughtful, multifaceted work. In her ninth novel, the Canadian writer (Sanctuary Line, 2010, etc.) again taps her family's Irish background. Tamara is one of a group of female pilots who ferry fighter planes around England during World War II. She then flees an unhappy marriage to settle with childhood friend Teddy in Ireland. A few years after his drowning death, she begins an affair with married Niall, a meteorologist whose County Kerry family is darkened by his mother's suicide and the subsequent psychotic tantrums of his brother, Kieran. The unsatisfying relationship, full of long waits for short trysts, drives her to flee Niall for the U.S., when the clearly symbolic fog-see also the Eugene O'Neill epigraph from "Long Day's Journey Into Night"-delays the flight in Gander, Newfoundland, and lets her ponder her life and the waiting room's mural by real-life Canadian painter Kenneth Lochhead called "Flight and Its Allegories." The novel essentially begins in that waiting room and then expands in parallel narratives about the painter and the brother while constantly returning to this former pilot, who wonders: "How could she, one of those previously forceful birds, find herself so essentially adrift?" Urquhart-whose prose at times flows from the same hand that has written four volumes of poetry-reveals her characters slowly, placing them within or privy to smaller narratives, vignettes, anecdotes that are themselves small marvels of storytelling and serve the several themes of love's pain, family turmoil, and the elusive sense of home and place, especially in light of Ireland's immigrant history. The Kieran narrative almost overwhelms with its powerful mix of sibling rivalry, Irish mysticism, and the passion of a first love. Yet ultimately, with Urquhart's masterful hand, it fits well among the novel's resonant whole. Highly satisfying on many levels, this novel will have book clubs basking in its big symbols and abuzz over Tamara's final decision; for when the fog lifts, there are two planes outside: one to New York and one to Shannon.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2015
In 1958, former WWII aviator Tamara Edgeworth is struggling with the transition from pilot to passenger. When a heavy fog traps her flight at Newfoundland's Gander Airport on the way from Ireland to New York, she is grounded at a literal and metaphorical crossroad. During the three-day layover, Tam contemplates the airport's newly unveiled modernist mural, Flight and Its Allegories (an actual work by Canadian artist Kenneth Lochhead). The 22-panel masterpiece inspires her to reflect on her life and all that she is leaving behind, including her prewar English upbringing, her devotion to the wild Irish landscape, and her complicated affair with Niall, a troubled meteorologist. She contemplates the way Niall has been undone by the mysterious disappearance of his brother, Kieran, a competitive bicyclist whose story slowly emerges as the novel's true focus. Canadian author Urquhart's (Sanctuary Line, 2013) elegiac prose evokes metaphors of arrivals and departures as she weaves together Tam and Niall's love story, Kieran's history, and a fictionalized account of Lochhead's creation of the enigmatic mural that serves as the narrative centerpiece.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from June 15, 2015

At the airport in Gander, Newfoundland, a vibrant mural Flight and Its Allegories graces one wall. This work by Kenneth Lochhead serves as a metaphor for the conflicted characters in Canadian Urquhart's ninth novel (after Sanctuary Line). Each is urgently fleeing something--memory, trauma, commitment. As Tam sits in the airport, grounded literally and figuratively, waiting for the fog to lift, she examines the artwork and muses over her rebellious childhood, her impetuous marriage to the man who taught her to fly, the respite in Ireland with Teddy, and her career ferrying warplanes for the Air Transport Authority during World War II. Especially painful to recount is her affair with Niall, a moody, married Irishman who appeared at her cottage door one day in need of a phone after a biking accident. The emotionally stunted Niall grapples with demons that fill him with debilitating guilt, yet over the course of their long push/pull relationship Tam extracts the story of Niall's missing brother Kieran, the heart and soul of this melancholy novel. VERDICT Urquhart's poetic, almost ethereal writing invites readers to revisit certain passages and marvel. This book about unquenchable longing is a lovely addition to her distinguished, award-filled oeuvre. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/15.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015

A popular and much honored author in Canada (her prizes includes the Governor General's Award), Urquhart should be better known here. Having particularly appreciated her last title, Sanctuary Line, I'm eager to see if this title will finally do the trick. After a terrible accident, pilot Tamara finds herself grounded in Ireland, where she commences a long and satisfying affair with the charming Niall--until Niall's guilt over the sudden disappearance of his younger brother drives them apart. Fleeing westward, Tamara pauses in fogged-in Gander, Newfoundland, where she reconstructs her life story for us while gazing at the airport mural.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2015

At the airport in Gander, Newfoundland, a vibrant mural Flight and Its Allegories graces one wall. This work by Kenneth Lochhead serves as a metaphor for the conflicted characters in Canadian Urquhart's ninth novel (after Sanctuary Line). Each is urgently fleeing something--memory, trauma, commitment. As Tam sits in the airport, grounded literally and figuratively, waiting for the fog to lift, she examines the artwork and muses over her rebellious childhood, her impetuous marriage to the man who taught her to fly, the respite in Ireland with Teddy, and her career ferrying warplanes for the Air Transport Authority during World War II. Especially painful to recount is her affair with Niall, a moody, married Irishman who appeared at her cottage door one day in need of a phone after a biking accident. The emotionally stunted Niall grapples with demons that fill him with debilitating guilt, yet over the course of their long push/pull relationship Tam extracts the story of Niall's missing brother Kieran, the heart and soul of this melancholy novel. VERDICT Urquhart's poetic, almost ethereal writing invites readers to revisit certain passages and marvel. This book about unquenchable longing is a lovely addition to her distinguished, award-filled oeuvre. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/15.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.