More Words: There is some breathless feeling associated with reading a book set in a place you call home. I miss Canada. This is a great novel, it's really too bad it will be forgotten. Urquhart build miracles with words. I think I might have another go at Away. I think I might have to read more Canadian authors. But this, this is a great novel.
Plot Summary: A no longer young woman leaves home to help carve a monument. So many things happen.
Quotes:
Like every other man, woman, and child in Bavaria, Father Gstir was well
aware that King Ludwig was mad, and he knew that an interest in Canada was
precisely the kind of course the King's mad mind was likely to take. p10
"It is the same with almost anything that remains abandoned. Friends,
sweethearts, places, homelands, houses, and this castle in my mind. After a
certain period of time the roof goes and there is no turning back. Still it is
important to see what kind of ruin remains, for it is my contention that only
the greatest works make beautiful ruins." p53
She felt utterly fixed within the dimensions of a house. p142
"Listen, Tilman said gently to his friend, "anything you want is possible.
My grandfather knew a priest once who built a gigantic church in the wilderness
- right in the middle of a forest - a stone church. With a bell. And my
grandfather carved the alters out of wood, just like he was in Europe."
p210
People up and die, she thought, they up and die before they have their fill
of the impossible. Her grandfather had died before Tilman's much-longed-for
return. Father Gstir had died before the bell for his illogical church was
blessed. Eamon, without ever laying a hand on a military aircraft. They all had
approached their desires naked, simple and glowing, without artifice or
disguise, their wide open hearts an uncomplicated target for annulment of one
kind or another. Renunciation was an option they never even had time to consider
before they were rejected by experience and the light was cancelled.
This was not going to happen to her. She would court the impossible, but
she would conceal herself, confuse the spirit of annihilation, bring no
attention to her quest. p253
Questions:
Why is Klara the only woman in this book? (not counting her mother, her grandmother, the nuns and Crazy Phoebe)
What are Klara's feminine qualities? What are her masculine qualities?
Can we have whatever we dream?
Must time erase everything?
How is tenderness important in this story?
What's the significance of the whistle?
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