Shortlisted 1996 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Canadian writer Urquhart's third novel (after Changing Heaven ) is an elegiac, lushly lyrical, enchanting family saga celebrating the Irish spirit and the resilience of Irish immigrants adapting to North America. In Ireland in the 1840s, Mary O'Malley converses with spirits and, according to local superstition, becomes possessed by a demon-lover after holding in her arms a drowned sailor washed ashore on her rocky island off the country's northern coast. Escaping the potato famine, Mary migrates to Ontario with her husband Brian, a schoolteacher who runs into trouble for teaching his students about England's oppression of the Irish. Eileen, the O'Malleys' Canadian-born daughter, falls hopelessly in love with emigre Irish nationalist Aidan Lanighan and becomes an unwitting accomplice to the assassination of a real-life historical figure, Irish-Canadian politician D'Arcy McGee, who is shot to death in the Ottawa Parliament. Framed by the memories of Mary's octogenarian great-granddaughter, Esther, this beautifully nuanced tale is inflected with Irish legend and folklore and is peopled with colorful dreamers, eccentrics, poets, romantics and revolutionaries, such as Thomas J. Doherty, who builds wind machines and charms skunks, and Exodus Crow, an Ojibway Indian who discovers Mary's frozen corpse and later befriends the remaining O'Malleys. (June)
Like a heartbreakingly romantic ballad of hard times, unrequited love, and lamentation, Urquhart's third novel (following Changing Heaven, LJ 3/15/93) is an entrancing saga of a family who must leave Ireland for Canada during the potato famine of the 1840s. As a young girl in Ireland, Mary is taken ``away'' to the faeries after a young sailor (a faerie-daemon) whom she rescued dies in her arms. Although she does eventually marry, have a family, and start a new life in the Canadian wilderness, Mary still hears the call of her sailor and finally leaves her family to live the rest of her life alone by a lake. Her daughter Eileen, in turn, falls in love with an Irish nationalist whose passion is only for his cause; she spends the rest of her life ``away'' in thoughts of him. Urquhart beguiles the reader with a cast of lovable eccentric characters in a wonderfully surreal world that includes a talking crow and a man who can charm skunks ``away.'' An extraordinary achievement; highly recommended.-Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
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