Sanctuary Line
Jane Urquhart
Sanctuary Line
Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth century in Ireland and Ontario into a contemporary story of events in the lives of one family. Recently returned to Lake Erie to study the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, entomologist Liz Crane moves into her family's now-deserted farmhouse. Casting a shadow over her life is the recent death of her cousin, Amanda Butler, a gifted military strategist killed in Afghanistan, and the disappearance many years earlier of her irrepressible, charismatic uncle. Liz explores the many-layered history of the eccentric Butler family, ancestral lighthouse-keepers, agriculturalists and dreamers and re-evaluates the lives of the seasonal workers imported each summer from Mexico to harvest the fruit on the farm, with them Teo, a young boy alone in his apartness. Surrounded by memories, Liz herself is haunted by a deeply buried family secret, by four different, unexpected love affairs, and by the tragic events that ultimately altered all their futures.
2.7 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
256 |
| RRP |
£16.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0857051240 |
| Publisher |
Maclehose |
| |
Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth century in Ireland and Ontario into a contemporary story of events in the lives of one family. Recently returned to Lake Erie to study the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, entomologist Liz Crane moves into her family's now-deserted farmhouse. Casting a shadow over her life is the recent death of her cousin, Amanda Butler, a gifted military strategist killed in Afghanistan, and the disappearance many years earlier of her irrepressible, charismatic uncle. Liz explores the many-layered history of the eccentric Butler family, ancestral lighthouse-keepers, agriculturalists and dreamers and re-evaluates the lives of the seasonal workers imported each summer from Mexico to harvest the fruit on the farm, with them Teo, a young boy alone in his apartness. Surrounded by memories, Liz herself is haunted by a deeply buried family secret, by four different, unexpected love affairs, and by the tragic events that ultimately altered all their futures.
Reviews
The Financial Times
Susan Elderkin
"The narrative is a series of reflections on the past with few actual scenes. The effect is that of a thin veil hanging between us and the action. This is not helped by the fact that the butterfly metaphor remains just that: we never see Liz at work in her lab, pinning specimens or tagging wings. And yet as she moves around the old house attempting to solve the riddle of “all that was lost”, the windows and mirrors reproducing and scrambling the views of the lake, the apple orchards decaying and the old barns sagging, the technique begins to justify itself ... Urquhart handles the layers of narrative with lyrical aplomb."
16/01/2012
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The Times
Kate Saunders
"Urquhart’s writing is poetic, in the sense that it is beautifully compact and restrained when describing the most powerful emotions."
21/01/2012
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The Sunday Times
David Gyrlls
"Books that depend for their primary effect on postponing revelation require not only a spectacular climax but some enticing narrative foreplay. The payoff in Sanctuary Line is moderately spectacular ... But the teasing build-up is too diffuse to generate real excitement. One can, after all, hear quite enough about the magical potency of place and the haunting depredations of time. One can certainly have too much of ancestors."
08/01/2012
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The Scotsman
Erikka Askeland
"Urquhart may be reacting to Margaret Attwood’s preoccupation with a hostile Canadian wilderness barren of European myths and legends, as she sets out to layer her landscape with quirky family histories, of suicidal lighthouse men and the dangers faced by farmers who covet their neighbour’s barn … But Urquhart is not quite the talent that Attwood is. Her vignettes provide some lovely moments, but her landscape can be bland. "
21/01/2012
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The Guardian
Susanna Rustin
"In a past tense rich with nostalgia, and a voice filled with regret, Urquhart builds up a picture of a vanished idyll, a thriving fruit farm populated by an extended family sure of its place in the world … . I knew her sensibility was conservative, romantic, but I was dismayed by the moral of this melancholy story and taken aback that such a distinguished novelist could be so narrow-minded."
13/01/2012
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