"Landscape as literature."

She is definitely among my elite favorites, of contemporary authors.
Jane Urquhart.
Her latest work, A Map of Glass, is her sixth novel, and the fifth that I have read. The only one I have not read yet is entitled Away. Then, of course, there is Storm Glass, a collection of short stories. And there are four books of her poetry, which I may also get to.
A few weeks ago (Sept.12th) I was at a reading and discussion session where Jane spoke of her new book, and it was probably the best literary event I have ever attended. She is just so incredibly brilliant, witty, charming [which is the word I am using to encompass the sentence “I fell in love with her all over again”] gorgeous, and fascinating. Of all of these adjectives, were I forced to choose one, I would have to go with “fascinating” in the truest Oxford sense, which is that of “capturing the interest of” or “attracting irresistably.”
Jane Urquhart is fascinating, because Jane Urquhart is fascinated.
If I had a sound-reel of just the times she began her responses to audience questions with the words “Well, I became fascinated by....” that reel alone would be several minutes long. She seems to be so immersed in life that her excitement, her freshness of appreciation, is infectious.
When you see her, and hear her, you catch it.
I heard Jane speak at another event several years ago, after the release of her fabulous book The Stone Carvers, and then too, I was mesmerized by her wealth of knowledge and depth of research. The book dealt extensively with the World War I battle at Vimy Ridge, in France, and to hear of Jane’s research in the underground tunnels where so many men lived and died, it brought tears to my eyes. Quite literally.
Her stories always seem tied in one way or another to actual historical personages that have captivated her attention. In a word, they have “fascinated” her, and so much so, that she built exquisite fictions around them. For instance, in The Whirlpool (1986) – Laura Secord; in Changing Heaven (1990) – Emily Bronte; in The Underpainter (1997) – Rockwell Kent; in The Stone Carvers (2001) – Walter Allward; in A Map of Glass (2005) – Robert Smithson.
Two more things about Jane Urquhart’s writing, and then I am going home for supper.
Landscape and imagery.
In introducing Jane (on the 12th) the host said... “She is a writer who is creating landscape as literature.”
It cannot be better said. I have rarely read an author so connected to specific setting. Lakes, forests, windswept heaths, bogs, battlefields, there is no one who can sculpt all of this with words, better than Jane Urquhart. You squint when the sun strikes the frost on an Urquhartian fencepost.
And imagery. More than meets the eye. There are so many layers to what Jane is up to, you may see ghosts after reading her.

I have just finished reading this latest book, A Map of Glass..... and look... we are all out of time. Suffice it to say, she just keeps getting better.
What is the book about?
Who cares!

Just get it, and read it.
If you love great literature, if you love intricate story, you will not be disappointed.
Thus saith bookpuddle!
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