A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [0]
“Urquhart’s passion for the past and the land are at full poetic play in this intricate story of love, loss and memory.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A mesmerizing exposition of ideas, slowly nurtured to maturity with integrity and a rare meticulous intelligence.”
— Irish Independent
“A serious, mature novel abundantly displaying the power and skill Urquhart has built up over decades in her poetry and prose.… Urquhart’s considerable following, or anyone willing to be seduced by her cadences … will be moved by the truth in her story and enchanted by its beauty.”
— Quill & Quire
“ A Map of Glass is carefully observed, finely nuanced, and deeply involving.”
— Richard Bachmann, A Different Drummer Books
“Urquhart’s eerie, intense meditation about damaged seekers tracking salvation balances personal chaos with wider reflections on life and loss … . Achieves an odd beauty and unsettling urgency that may linger beyond the expected.”
— Irish Times
“A beautifully written elegy.”
— Financial Times
“An excellent piece of historical fiction … .”
— National Post
“Urquhart excels at making 100 years ago feel as vibrant as yesterday.”
— Christian Science Monitor
“Exquisite … . A marvellous, pristine ornament, an intricate poem.”
— The Australian
“A passion for history is the blood that keeps the narrative heart beating.…”
— Toronto Star
BOOKS BY JANE URQUHART
FICTION
The Whirlpool (1986)
Storm Glass (short stories, 1987)
Changing Heaven (1990)
Away (1993)
The Underpainter (1997)
The Stone Carvers (2001)
A Map of Glass (2005)
Sanctuary Line (2010)
NON-FICTION
L. M. Montgomery (2009)
POETRY
I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace (1981)
False Shuffles (1982)
The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan (1985)
Some Other Garden (2000)
AS EDITOR
The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories (2007)
Copyright © 2005 by Jane Urquhart
Cloth edition published 2005
Emblem edition published 2006
This Emblem edition published 2010
Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Urquhart, Jane, 1949-
A map of glass / Jane Urquhart.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-425-3
I. Title.
PS8591.R68M36 2010 c813’.54 c2010-903457-0
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
The epigraph on this page is from Robert Smithson’s essay “A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites” (1968), published in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack Flam. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of the Estate and VAGA (Visual Artists and Galleries Association).
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For A.M. to the west of me
And A.M. to the east of me.
They encouraged and inspired.
“By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a ‘logical two dimensional picture.’ A ‘logical picture’ differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for.”
— Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings
He is an older man walking in winter. And he knows this. There is white everywhere and a peculiar, almost acidic smell that those