Jane Urguhart’s dense little novel The Stone Carvers really took a beating from me these past months. As the title of this blog post suggests, I had intended it to be my August CanLit selection, but then my book club picked The Historian for its September read (a tome of 700+ pages) and I started back to school with an upper year English Lit course to read for. Poor Urquhart just kept getting shunted aside.
I think had I the time to sit and read just this novel, I would have enjoyed it more. As said above, it’s quite dense, with a lot going on and a lot of switches between place, time and character. Picking it up and putting it down repeatedly did not help my following the story any, and so often after weeks of reading something else, I would return to this book, utterly lost as the next chapter dealt with an entirely different character, setting or situation then when last I had read it.
Not that there aren’t threads that weave between and tie things all together in a nice little package. There are, but the novel’s continuity is in very broad strokes, while Urquhart’s writing is often far more minute.
This is a multi-generational story, much of which is set in Shoneval, a community in Southern Ontario. The novel opens with Father Gstir emigrating from Bavaria to form a church in the middle of a forest, which later becomes the community of Shoneval. His zealotry is inspiring, and local carver Joseph Becker is enlisted to help build the church. More than half a century later, his descendants still reside in Shoneval and carve figures for the church.
The story continues from there to chronicle the life of Klara, Joseph’s granddaughter who has his skill, but is unfortunately female. Her brother Tilman rejects the family legacy, becomes a hobo and is absent for much of Klara’s life.
When first introduced to Klara, we learn she is a spinster, working as a tailor and carver, living alone on the family farm. Her story is a tragic tale of love lost – her fiancé, Eamon, fought and died in the Great War. From the loss of Eamon, Tilman and her father and grandfather, Klara turns inward, becoming as frozen in time and existence as the statues she carves. It isn’t until Tilman returns and she learns of a great war memorial being constructed at Vimy Ridge, does Klara experience a resurgence of desire and purpose in life. She and Tilman travel to France to work on the structure and both finally find purpose and fulfillment.
An interesting read, that again, I wish I’d had the proper time and attention for. I quite look forward to reading more by Urquhart as I suspect her novels are gems waiting to be discovered.
Till next time, happy reading!
L J
| TBR = 25 | WPL = 28 |
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