Storm Glass - Softcover

Urquhart, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889841063 ISBN 13: 9780889841062

Publisher: Porcupines Quill, 1987

Synopsis

`In 1986, Jane Urquhart published her first novel, The Whirlpool, to almost universal critical acclaim. When it met with a negative response, it tended to offend or bemuse because of its imaginative content. In The Whirlpool, Urquhart treated reality with contempt. She was clearly a courageous stylist with a unique vision. Now, with Storm Glass, the courage of the stylist is confirmed and the uniqueness of the vision is expanded.

`Though most of the stories here predate the writing of The Whirlpool, the reader is given the chance, once again, to explore the territory of dreams and memory so vividly established in that book. Clearly, this is a milieu in which Urquhart excels.

`Other times and other places lend their colour to most of the stories in this collection. Windows and glass are also prominent. Some of the characters have no names and all of them are dreamers, though what they dream is hardly the stuff of which good sleep is made. Storm Glass is exhilarating precisely because the dreams of which it tells are so disturbing: disturbingly real and disturbingly familiar. Most readers will recognize the impulse here to wake up and escape the dream, but most will also recognize the tantalizing magic of dreams that keeps us going back for more.' (Timothy Findley Books in Canada)

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Urquhart combines the poet’s passionate feeling for language and the material world with nearly a classicist’s sense of form....A lavishness of imagination is brought to bear on small moments, and the writing is of such intensity that a character is often revealed in one expression, a way of life disclosed in a single scene....”
–Ken Adachi, Toronto Star

“A collection of mythic, dreamlike stories....Description of her tales belittles their strength and cannot convey the elegance of her prose.”
–Kingston Whig-Standard

“Urquhart has impressive talent. There’s nothing simple and obvious here; concentric circles of meaning ripple out from the stories, and the prose shimmers like reflections in a deep pool....”
–Globe and Mail

From the Inside Flap:

With stunning virtuosity, the stories in Jane Urquhart's dazzling first book of fiction unearth universal truths as they reach across countries and eras. A woman runs away to a cottage in the English moors to escape a love affair; shards of glass reconcile a middle-aged wife to her husband's estrangement; a grandmother makes a startling confession from her youth; a young woman discovers herself through the life of an Italian saint; and, in a spellbinding story of artistic jealousy, we enter the mind of poet Robert Browning at the end of his life. In these beautifully crafted stories, ordinary objects brim with meaning and memories radiate with significance as Jane Urquhart illuminates the things that lie just beneath the surface of our lives.

About this edition

• Publisher: Porcupines Quill
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0889841063
• ISBN 13: 9780889841062
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128