Away by Jane Urquhart ~ 1993. This edition: McLelland & Stewart, 1997. Softcover. ISBN: 0-7710-8650-4. 356 pages.

My rating: 7.5/10

*****

What a beautifully written novel this one is. I am quite in awe of Urquhart’s lyrically gifted writer’s voice. But, I find myself musing, maybe a bit too much of a good thing? There is a story in this book as well, a normal narrative tale about an Irish family’s migration from the Old to the New World, which is in and of itself interesting and compelling, but which loses some of its power because of the gauzy, mystical clouds which the author shrouds her every scene in.

Away is a hybrid of historical fiction and magical realism, both genres which are notoriously hard to master all on their own, let alone in combination, as Urquhart has attempted ambitiously and generally successfully here.  The twin threads in this case do work surprisingly well. But – and here’s my biggest objection – so much is thrown at the reader both plot- and style-wise that it tends to dull one’s appreciation of the more delicate nuances of the intricate prose after a while.

Does one concentrate on the sober narrative for the story, or does one allow oneself to be swept away into the mystical bits? I tried to do both, but it felt an awful lot like work by mid-novel. I’m glad I read Away, because now I can tick it off my Must-Read Can Lit list, and I appreciated it as a work of art, but I’m not sure I will be re-reading it any time soon, if ever. I am definitely open to reading more by Jane Urquhart, but it would need to be at a time in my life when I could block off the necessary uninterrupted time to really concentrate and fully embrace the experience. Not quite sure when this magical time would be, though!

*****

The three most short-lived traces: the trace of a bird on a branch, the trace of a fish on a pool, and the trace of a man on a woman.

                                                                 -an Irish triad

The novel begins at the end of the story, with an elderly woman bidding farewell to her Ontario lakeshore home as it is about to be erased by the relentless expansion of a limestone quarry. As she wanders through the rooms of her doomed house, we see glimpses of artifacts of her life and the lives of her family and her ancestors. The author steps us back in time, one hundred and forty years before and thousands of miles away, to the storm-washed shores of an Irish island, where a teenage girl is about to stumble upon a scene which will mark her and her descendents irretrievably deeply, hence confounding the third line of the triad quoted at the beginning of the tale.

Irish Mary wades into the surf to pull out the body of a beautiful young man, barely alive and about to die. Before he expires, he opens his eyes and whispers a name – “Moira” – which the enchanted Mary embraces as her rightful new own. And when, some time later, Mary-now-Moira is found sleeping in the embrace of the dead man on the beach, she does not respond to the people around her, being lost in a dazed trance. The obvious explanation is that she has been bewitched by a daemon lover, and has lost her true soul, which has wandered “away” into the faery realm. She must be treated with care and compassion, in order that her soul may return to her one day.

Which it does, with the help of the local priest, who also sets her up with a suitably inclined husband, Moira-turned-back-to-Mary settles back into her normal life, though the edges of the other world are always visible to her. Mary has a son, and, when the potato famine inevitably strikes, sets sail for Canada with her husband and child. They go through all of the usual miseries, and fetch up eventually in the vast Canadian forest, where fellow immigrants surreally materialize from the woods to build the new family’s first shelter for them in a sort of dream sequence.

The family is successful in their new life, and a daughter joins the son, but Mary is being called by her other world once again, and one day slips away for good, following the call of the water wherein dwells her spirit lover.

More predictable historically fictional bits follow, as Mary’s children grow into adults and set off on lives of their own. Her son pragmatically moves ahead without bothering too much about the mystical heritage of his mother, but the daughter is a true creature of both worlds, and she finds her own beautiful young man, a charismatic Fenian rebel who has sworn himself to dance out the story of the Irish immigrants’ woes to the politicians deciding their fates. As may be supposed, this all ends most badly, but the line of daughters continues on, until we are back again in the doomed house with the rattlings of the quarry blastings shaking its foundations and its lone last inhabitant, Mary’s great-granddaughter.

*****

Is Away a book all Canadians should read? From the number of high school and college reading lists this one now appears on, it would seem that the powers-that-be would think so.

I don’t.

It’s certainly a gorgeous thing as a piece of literary art, but a rarefied type of read, I suspect best appreciated by those open to the fantastical elements so liberally used here. As a piece of historical fiction, the tale is flawed in that it assumes the reader will be coming to it from a place of prior knowledge, and is perhaps rather unreliable in its narration of actual events. It somehow misses feeling quite real. It could be tough going for many, especially those without the knowledge of context to separate fact from fantasy, or to fully appreciate the inferences the author relies on throughout.

Wonderfully lush and truly lovely, but too rich and paradoxically vague for everyday and everyperson consumption, I’m thinking.

*****

On to Lisa Moore’s February, for which I hold high hopes.

At present, here are my personal picks for the Canada Reads rankings.

For #1 spot, a tie between Indian Horse and Away. I may revise this once I’ve had some thinking time, but I’d better decide quickly, if I want to beat the debates!

Two Solitudes, in its half-read state, follows. It is rather too much of a period piece, but it is not necessarily a bad book, more of a product of its time in its earnest dullness.

The Age of Hope is at the bottom of the pile. It’s a common little thing, engaging and interesting enough, I willingly admit, but not worthy of the Canada Reads top laurels, in my opinion.

Dark horse February may shake things up.