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The Stone Carvers

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 1,941 ratings · 103 reviews

Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but reaching back to Bavaria in the late nineteenth century, "The Stone Carvers" weaves together the story of ordinary lives marked by obsession and transformed by art. At the centre of a large cast of characters is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master carver, a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by the Firs...more

Published (first published April 10th 2001)

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Apr 19, 2012 Steven Buechler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Novels about crafts and craftspeople are fantastic ways to lose oneself in this busy world. This book did that trick for me.

Page 275
When Giorgio Vigamonti was twenty-five and back from the war, he had almost immediately gone to see his friend and employer, the tombstone-maker Juliani. Things were still prosperous in a city such as Hamilton, a place dedicated to the fabrication of various kinds of metal, a city that had almost more than anywhere else in the country benefitted from the increased m...more Novels about crafts and craftspeople are fantastic ways to lose oneself in this busy world. This book did that trick for me.

Page 275
When Giorgio Vigamonti was twenty-five and back from the war, he had almost immediately gone to see his friend and employer, the tombstone-maker Juliani. Things were still prosperous in a city such as Hamilton, a place dedicated to the fabrication of various kinds of metal, a city that had almost more than anywhere else in the country benefitted from the increased manufacturing brought about by the boom in the armaments industry.
Juliani had embraced the returning soldier and then without pausing for conversation, had handed him a carving tool. He needed help, he said. Many of the wealthy and some of the not so wealthy wanted memorials for their dead sons, marble plaques for various churches, portrait busts for the cemetery or, if the home was ostentatious enough, for the hall. There was lots of work, he told Giorgio, and lots of money.
"How's your pal, Tilman?" he had asked. "Dead or alive?"
"I haven't seen him, but I've heard he's alive. He was wounded out at Vimy. Lost a leg, so they say."
"Poor bugger."
"Yes."
"He was pretty good with marble but liked wood better. I seem to remember. Not a bad carver. Glad it's only a leg he lost. It could have been his right arm."
Giorgio was wandering through a room filled with half-finished projects, the pale faces of young men stared at him from every corner, and the chisel was hanging useless at the end of his own right arm. "What shall I do?" he asked.
"Words, said Juliana. "You'r going to have to do a lot of words. Seems like everybody nowadays wants to express themselves. Used to be a name and the dates would do, but no more. You kill off a generation of boys and suddenly the whole world becomes interested in poetry. Sometimes, God forbid, they even write the poetry themselves." He told Giorgio that he had seen hardened capitalists approach his shop, a piece of white paper shaking in their hands, tears in their eyes when they read the trite verses aloud. It was almost always the men who came to him, he said, and oddly they had all wanted him to approve of their choice of elegiac lines. Women visited the shop only if there was no man to do the job, and they were surprisingly less overtly emotional, often satisfied with the "king and country" epitaph.
"I don't know how to carve words," said Giorgio.
"You'll learn. I'll show you a couple of scripts, and you'll learn."(less)

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Jul 25, 2011 Roy added it · review of another edition

Reaching back to the nineteenth century , when a Bavarian priest is sent on a mission to the wilderness of the new World , the narrative takes place mainly in a German settled area of southwestern Ontario, in the years leading up to the first World War , and through the war years , and the subsequent Depression era when the world lost its innocence . The story of this priest , of the fulfillment of his extraordinary vision, becomes a beloved one in the village of Shoneval , and sets the scene fo...more

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Oct 14, 2009 Tiffany rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, international-fiction, canadian-literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 21, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical

The Stone Carvers did not draw me in as much as I hoped it would based on the description. The plot is rather vast and follows several different characters, and the narrative changes perspectives from one character to another through-out the novel. We learn the story of Father Gstir, who built a large stone church in a German-settled town in Northern Ontario; Joseph Becker, a wood carver who made many things for Father Gstir; Klara Becker, the granddaughter of Joseph who learned to carve from hi...more

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May 16, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jane Urquhart has demonstrated in A MAP OF GLASS and THE UNDERPAINTER how a person can be transformed by the power of art and memory. The characters are sometimes made whole, or shattered, or both. In this fifth novel, her eccentric, parochial characters emerge from the harsh, often punishing 19th-century landscape of a pioneer community in Southwest Ontario and stretch to a modern monument of the 20th century. Her characters tend to be repressed, isolated, and sexually chaste, or go through a l...more Jane Urquhart has demonstrated in A MAP OF GLASS and THE UNDERPAINTER how a person can be transformed by the power of art and memory. The characters are sometimes made whole, or shattered, or both. In this fifth novel, her eccentric, parochial characters emerge from the harsh, often punishing 19th-century landscape of a pioneer community in Southwest Ontario and stretch to a modern monument of the 20th century. Her characters tend to be repressed, isolated, and sexually chaste, or go through a long period of continence after a brief, signifying affair in their youth.

Father Gstir was sent by the voice of God and King Ludwig from the pastoral landscape of Bavaria to the outback of Ontario, to minister to German-Catholic communities. He lands in the valley of Shoneval, a farming and mill town of hard working people who haven't had the time or inclination to attend church, and lures them to Mass by arranging a Corus Christi procession that invites community participation and planning. We are introduced to Jospeh Becker, a farmer and wood-carver with a rare talent, who befriends Father Gstir and creates beautiful sculptures for the new church. The only thing missing for the priest is a bell. He is obsessed with acquiring one, as he was in Bavaria--and ignored by the King. His obsession is one of several character's fanatical desires in this book.

The story progresses non-linearly, but with active forward movement. The structure allows for the background of each character to evolve in gentle installments, but with seamless clarity. Joseph desires to pass on his artisan skills to his son, Dieter, but it is Dieter's daughter, Klara, who blossoms quietly as a carver, and also learns to master tailoring from her grandmother. Her brother, Tilman, named for the great sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider, is too restive to stay and make figures-in-the-round from limewood; he is a wanderlust, and leaves the family when he is twelve after his parents chain him to the barn for roaming too frequently and too far from home.

"I went for a walk...I followed the road."

As he wandered, he embraced the spines of hills and the language of water; he related to a bridge and compared it to home:

"He loved that bridge with a child's love, the way a boy will love a tree house...But he loved it too in a way peculiar to his own nature, because it gave him shelter without closing him in. There were no impenetrable walls, no doors that might contain locks."

Tilman becomes a hobo, and learns a lesson about love from unusual events. He meets another tramp, Refuto, on his travels, who enfolds him into his big, Italian, warm-hearted family. Tilman works in stoveworks for a while with Refuto's son, Girogio, trying to tame his meandering spirit, but then takes off to join as a soldier in WW 1. The prodigal son's return is fraught with meaning and a courageous stride into the future.

Klara Becker, an attractive seamstress, has worked on a wood carving of a medieval abess for over twenty years, and finally abandons it to the barn with her grief intact. Her sorrow and subsequent repression stems from a tragic relationship with a young man, Eamon O'Sullivan, when she was twenty. Eamon was seduced by aeroplanes into WW 1, and departs to follow a burning dream of becoming a pilot. She devotes herself to the church and to her seamstress activities, and embraces her spinster self. The sculpture is consigned to loss.

"All her faith was gone and with it the desire for carving, for making something spiritual out of wood. With Eamon lost, she felt connected to no one."

The themes of the story come together in the third part of the novel, near Arras, France, where sculptor Walter Allward is commissioned to create a monument to the Canadian soldiers who died at Vimy Ridge during WW1. Urquhart synthesizes the real life Allward into her novel to herald a compelling story of loss cumulating into redemption, obsession into letting go, repression into passion, and the prevailing, ubiquitous power of memory and the salvation of art.

At first, I had difficulty adjusting to the last part of the novel, which removed me from the charming village of Shovenal. However, Urquhart convinced me, ultimately, by carrying her motifs and themes to this climactic achievement in history, a monument of memory, arranged by the obsessive Allward but animated by his artisans. Even the change from wood-carving to marble is symbolic, as the dead stone is brought to life in significant, poignant ways. There is so much to discuss about the final chapters, but it is difficult to do without adding spoilers.

Allward: "Carve it with your heart then...Let it go out of your heart and into the stone." (less)

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Feb 14, 2009 Traycee Wiebe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-favourites, canadian-lit

Another great book with fantastic imagery and a pull-you-in storyline that had me turning the pages until the story had come to an end. I was quite caught off-guard by this book. I was only expecting to enjoy it somewhat and it, but instead it became one of my favourite books! I can hardly wait to read more from Jane Urquhart.

Some of my favourite parts were how the mother and father tied the boy in the shed to keep him from wandering off and the pain of his release as both a blessing and a curse...more

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Nov 02, 2010 Mrsgaskell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcrossing, canadiana, 6-star

Perhaps it was just me, perhaps it was jetlag, but I found this book boring and nodded off several times while reading it. It looked interesting to begin with – the building of a cathedral in a small Ontario town by a German priest in the 19th century. The priest enlisted the help of a young millworker who had been a woodcarver in the old country and their story was just the backdrop to the story of the woodcarver’s grandchildren, spinster Klara, and runaway Tilman. I didn’t find the relationshi...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian

This story was an amazing journey and takes the reader into a time that was filled with loss and despair. The centre of this story is the art of remembering and how that is really achieved. I decided after reading some of this book to pick up books that shared the History of Canada in the various wars that were provided by the Government of Canada Veterans Affairs. If you are interested the series of books are entitled Valour Remembered. They cover Canada and the First World War, Canada and the...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction, historical-fiction, wwi-wwii

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial sits on a preserved battlefield in France where the Canadian Expeditionary Force took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge during World War I. The huge marble monument took 11 years to build and has giant human sculptures representing sacrifice, mourning, and strength and includes over 11,000 names of Canadian soldiers missing in action.
In Jane Urquhart's novel The Stone Carvers, we meet three fictional people who wind up working on this magnificent monument. Thei...more The Canadian National Vimy Memorial sits on a preserved battlefield in France where the Canadian Expeditionary Force took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge during World War I. The huge marble monument took 11 years to build and has giant human sculptures representing sacrifice, mourning, and strength and includes over 11,000 names of Canadian soldiers missing in action.
In Jane Urquhart's novel The Stone Carvers, we meet three fictional people who wind up working on this magnificent monument. Their lives are transformed both by the beauty of art and the horrors of war.
Klara and Tilman Becker grow up in rural Canada in a German immigrant community at the turn of the century. Their grandfather is a wood carver with high hopes for Tilman to learn the master craft. While Tilman has a natural carving ability, he is proves unable to stay on the farm. Even as early as 12, Tilman must migrate. Nothing his family does can keep him on the farm, not even a chain.
Klara learns to carve from her grandfather and how to tailor at an early age. She remains deeply rooted on the farm, earning a living for herself and her father. But even steadfast Klara is eventually moved by both personal grief and the greater losses of a county deeply wounded by war.
This book isn't about World War I specifically (you learn very little about the actual Battle of Vimy Ridge), but instead it is about overcoming grief even if that grief is indeterminable. I found myself cheering on the characters when they had trouble articulating in a relationship. In that sense, I am reminded of Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club and one of my all time favorites Deafening by Frances Itani. Both of these novels are also set in immigrant communities rural areas (one in North Dakota and one in Canada) and have characters who participate in World War I. The themes of language, communication and sound in Deafening specifically are truly amazing.
Highly recommended. Who says rural Canadian World War I fiction is too obscure?!(less)

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Feb 01, 2010 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-authors, canadian-reads, bookclub

I was interested to read Jane Urquhart's book and so pleased when our book club chose it. I ended up disappointed though as I found the characters to be 2 - dimensional and much of the storyline seems unlikely and there are long sections that are simply uninteresting or feel out of place. Some of the writing is fantastic but long-winded, side-stepping historical lessons reduced my interest in the main story. Overall, The Stone Carvers is a sad epic story of doomed romance, childhood abuse and st...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Deb by: cox_debra@yahoo.com.au

Shelves: fiction

Another book from my reading this year, predominantly set in Ontario. I was swept into the story reasonably quickly, and the humour and scene setting of the remote backblocks of Ontario vivid and entertaining. Having since researched the Vimy Memorial, the magnificant feat, and the horror of war that it represents, is woven beautifully into the story. There were moments of tears (and I have to say I haven't cried reading in a long time)and true emotion. You don't need to have a Canadian connecti...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Margaret rated it 5 of 5 stars

An unexpected delight, I would never have chosen this book had I not heard an enthusiastic review on another of Jane's books on the radio and decided to seek out one of her novels in a second hand bookshop I frequent. This was the only title if hers they had that day. The book started slowly for me but aroused enough curiosity to continue into what emerged as a deeply rewarding emersion into the world created by the novelist and words that brought tears to my eyes as rarely have others before. I...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is a World War I memorial in France dedicated to the Canadians who fought and died in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. It is a phenomenal memorial that I never knew existed, and it is worth looking up. Now this book is a fictional story of a family that immigrated to Canada, and that story culminates in the carving of this memorial. The characters are intriguing with odd personality traits, the story is interestingly written but I didn't realize the depth of its presentation until the end. It is...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved it. Urquhart has a descriptive and lyrical writing style that paints a picture of the story. I loved the depiction of WWI as told by those who were left behind and those who were left to remember.

I am fortunate to live minutes' walk from the Canadian War Museum, where 17 of the 20 casts of Allward's allegorical figures are part of a permanent installation in Regeneration Hall. This part of the museum is by far my favourite, and I have visited the figures many times. After finishing "The S...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Dianne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

In the opening years of the twentieth century, Klara Becker and her brother, Tilman, are growing up on a farm in Ontario, Canada. Klara is learning tailoring skills from her mother and carving skills from her Grandfather, Joseph, and Tilman is a wanderer who can't resist the urge to follow the road wherever it leads.

Decades earlier, a priest in Bavaria, Father Gstir, receives a letter telling him he is being sent to a remote Canadian village to establish a church. There he will meet the young Jo...more

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Feb 23, 2012 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian-lit

Klara Becker had decided to live like a spinster. Although still young, she doesn't expect any more from life: tending the animals on her inherited farm, sewing clothes for the villagers to earn a little extra money, and burying the memories of love and loss, until...

Klara is unquestionably Jane Urquhart's heroine in this wonderfully rich and absorbing novel about deep emotions, drive and determination. Set in the nineteen thirties, against the continuing aftermath of the most devastating histo...more Klara Becker had decided to live like a spinster. Although still young, she doesn't expect any more from life: tending the animals on her inherited farm, sewing clothes for the villagers to earn a little extra money, and burying the memories of love and loss, until...

Klara is unquestionably Jane Urquhart's heroine in this wonderfully rich and absorbing novel about deep emotions, drive and determination. Set in the nineteen thirties, against the continuing aftermath of the most devastating historical event of the early twentieth century, World War I, the author, by concentrating on intimate portraits of her protagonists, brings to life the personal challenges ordinary people faced during these difficult times.

The novel is structured into three distinct sections, focusing in turn on Klara, her brother Tilman and the construction of the Canadian War Memorial in Vimy, northern France. Klara's character comes to life primarily through her own observations and inner reflections. The depth of her emotional being that stands in sharp contrast to her external "spinster" persona, is exquisitely evoked in Urquhart's lyrical language. The following quote gives a taste of it: "When one embraces a moment of rapture from the past, either by trying to reclaim it or by refusing to let it go, how can its brightness not tarnish, turn grey with longing and sorrow, until the wild spell of the remembered interlude is lost altogether and the memory of sadness claims its rightful place in the mind?..."

In this section, the narrative moves easily between the thirties and the late eighteen eighties when Klara's grandfather, master woodcarver Joseph Becker, immigrated from Bavaria to southwestern Ontario in search for a new life. He had settled in the village of Shonegal where he found work with Father Gstir's ambitious church project for his small Catholic German congregation. Shoneval remained the centre of Klara's world; wood carving the craft to be passed on through the generations. Tilman, Klara's older brother, less interested in wood carving than in following the migrating birds, leaves home at a young age. Klara, on the other hand, quietly imitated her grandfather until she was ready to embark on her own carving project. Urquhart draws on the close interaction between her heroine and her work in progress - the statue of an abbess - to reveal the different emotional stages Klara experienced. Joseph could describe the changes he saw in the abbess's face, yet only guessing the source for his granddaughter's inner upheavals.

The third section of the novel draws the different threads of the story together and moves it to a different, yet intensely compelling level. The author provides an almost intimate account of the Canadian Vimy Memorial and the last stages of the work in progress, personalizing the direct involvement of its architect, Canadian Walter Allward and of the many skilled carvers implementing his dream. Her description of the enormous Monument, built on the actual battle field, and erected in memory of the many thousands of Canadian soldiers who perished in this decisive battle, leaves no doubt as to its impact on anybody seeing it. Urquhart's lyrical language evokes the eerie atmosphere that surrounds the carvers working high up on fragile platforms on either of the white limestone pylons that form the centre of the monument. The passages describing the intricate work of stone carvers whether swinging on ropes high up or working on engraving the thousands of names of the missing are some of the most memorable of the novel. The author imagines the stone carvers' daily existence: carving from dawn to dusk; living and breathing the atmosphere of the land, still saturated with the evidence of the war. For some, like for Klara and Tilman, the work is a release from the past, a new beginning that is grounded in forgiveness, closure and redemption. Not surprisingly, Urquhart, asked about what the novel was about, responded: "it is about the redemptive nature of art". Yes, indeed.

By bringing the different threads of the novel together around the Vimy memorial, Urquhart also achieves an admirable harmonization between the intimately imagined lives of her characters and the broader historical reality. Shonegal, for example, is based on the town of Formosa, the actual Father Gstir built the enormous church up on the hill as described in the novel. The imposing Vimy Monument continues to be well known to Canadians of all generations; Walter Allward, almost forgotten since as the architect of the Monument, has been given a well-deserved tribute in Urquhart's novel.(less)

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Oct 01, 2010 rabbitprincess rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who enjoy WW1 fiction and tales of love and loss

Recommended to rabbitprincess by: boyfriend's mum

Shelves: oh-canada, borrowed, family-friends-acquaintances-recs, 2010, canada-reads-le-combat-des-livres

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a book that I definitely appreciated more because I started to read it when I was home sick for a couple of days and therefore had the time to become immersed in the story. It is a very descriptive book with vivid details and interweaving storylines. For the purposes of this review, I shall go in actual chronological order when explaining events. We start with the early days of Shoneval, a small town in southwestern Ontario where Bavarian priest Father Gstir is sent to minister to the se...more This is a book that I definitely appreciated more because I started to read it when I was home sick for a couple of days and therefore had the time to become immersed in the story. It is a very descriptive book with vivid details and interweaving storylines. For the purposes of this review, I shall go in actual chronological order when explaining events. We start with the early days of Shoneval, a small town in southwestern Ontario where Bavarian priest Father Gstir is sent to minister to the settlers and build a church. He crosses paths with carver Joseph Becker, and eventually we get to Becker's grandchildren, Tilman and Klara. Tilman's a wanderer and lives his teens out on the road, and Klara has a brief, very sad love affair with a young Irishman named Eamon O'Sullivan, who leaves for the First World War and does not return. The story eventually leads the characters to the construction of the Vimy Memorial in France.

Overall I was surprisingly satisfied with this book. Normally I am not one for extensive description and moments of symbolism, but for some reason this book just clicked with me. Urquhart's attention to detail is excellent, and the story still manages to move along nicely even with the layers of description on top of it. She also manages to keep you guessing, plot-wise; I kept trying to figure out what would happen next but Urquhart consistently avoided those paths. No secret babies here! I was also pleased with the messages about love and the positive portrayal of not one, but two middle-aged romances. It's not an area many people tackle, and it is handled well here (matter-of-factly and garnished with only the necessary description).

Of course, if you go looking for the historical background to this story, some of the details will likely have been changed. For example, I looked at the Spirit of Sacrifice statue and I cannot say I imagined it to have quite so many visible ribs. And I'm not sure how Walter Allward would actually have reacted if someone had made unauthorized changes to his memorial. But of course one can take licence with this sort of thing as it does not purport to be a true story. The only other picky thing I have to say about this book is that I found the Deep Symbolic Moments* to be rather obvious toward the end, but that could also be an advantage if you were studying this book for an English class.

In summary, I would recommend this book to people with a taste for descriptive fiction and perhaps enjoy stories involving the First World War, love and loss, and the odd Symbolic Moment here and there.

*I capitalize this term because I have always been rather rubbish at coming up with original, insightful literary analysis and generally do not notice themes and symbols unless someone points them out to me. So my use of caps is somewhat facetious.

**Canada Reads 2011 Longlist(less)

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Nov 23, 2010 jo rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like love stories, wood, and stone

Shelves: canadian

***SPOILERS***

this book is written quite beautifully. at first, i thought i had died and gone to heaven. after the first night of reading i checked jane urquhart's books and saw there were many. i felt saved.

and still do.

however, i liked the book better when it was all immigrants, wood carvers and large churches in the middle of nowhere. i could have read about that for weeks. weeks of a priest's waiting for a bell to be delivered; weeks of harsh winters on the frontier; weeks of breweries, proc...more

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Jul 27, 2008 Dottie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: constant-reader, own, 2008

No, I'm not finished. Yes, four stars even so. Just FINALLY reading this one which should likely have been read long ago. Thoroughly enjoying the story thus far and I can see the light coming at me through the tunnel and feel the tremors in the ground -- don't know when the locomotive will hit me yet -- just know this is going to be "one of those books". Sigh.

And it was. Oh, should I say there were twists and quirks, and plenty of character development and that even so -- it was the place which...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Dlee rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 06, 2013 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this story. I could see everything in it. Bit of everything (apart from paranormal) that I like. Tales of immigrants (but well described emotional experiences and traditions not all facty and dull) Romance...sorrow...family stories and connections....more romance. This was the only book on my university reading list that made me cry (really...though ok A Farewell to Arms did bring a tear to my eye but not like this did) and I still went back and re read it when I got a chance.

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May 08, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

In anticipation of visiting the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France, I read this book. To me, it was the quintessential Canadian journey. It starts with immigrants to this country and then follows the second generation of these hearty and devote souls. World War I, an ocean away, intrudes on Canadian lives in ways that are poignant. The feelings run so deep that some feel the need to go back to France and help Allward in his quest to make a fitting tribute to those who sacrificed their lives.

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Nov 24, 2011 Anne Toronto1 rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Stone Carvers" by Jane Urquhart starts with two stories, a spinster's youth when she angrily falls in love, and bed, with "Silent Irish", and her priest's formative influence on the growth of their Germanic Ontario settlement. When 1914 war brings an aeroplane, the swain's fate is sealed. My favorite character, the wanderlust younger brother seems to be gone, so I quit. But I'm told he returns in the last third, so now torn about finishing.

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Nov 23, 2011 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-authors

I grew up in Kitchener, Ontario in a German community. My uncle was shot down over Frances, injured and taken prisoner by the Germans in WWII.

This novels for me makes strong connections between where I grew up and an event my uncle participated in but would rarely if ever speak about.

This novel honours the young and old men and women who participated actively in the Wars.

I learned so much about Vimy reading this novel.

Thank you Jane Urquhart.

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Aug 02, 2011 Kathy Mcdonald rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Great Canadian Book Challenge is opening up worlds for me. This is a novel which starts slowly but builds to a magnificent crescendo. The characters are many, from Father Gstir and his church, built in the wilderness, to the central character of Klara and her brother Tilman - two of the stone carvers of the title. I can't get enough of Canadians in the first world war and this novel approached that story in a unique way. Beautiful

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Nov 28, 2007 Beboots rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: history students, romantics

Now then, I actually had to read this as a part of my English 111 class in university. However, horror of horrors... I found that I really liked it! It wasn't a chore to read in any way, despite the fact that I had to read it's entire 390 pages over a single weekend. It held my interest, and had a lot of symbolism (so we had lots to discuss in-class), but it wasn't the sort of symbolism that only English teachers can see (you know what I'm talking about, AP scholars). This stuff, even I could pi...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Jennifer Mccague rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of my favourite books! I loved that the book was true to a small piece of History of Canada. It certainly made me want to head to France to see more, I felt I needed to see Vimy Ridge myself. I headed over but they were under construction or doing repairs and I was unable to see it. I shall have to return!

"I went for a walk.......I followed the road"

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Jan 22, 2011 CynthiaA rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pre-2008, canadian-author, set-during-wwi-2

I quite enjoyed this book... I found the lead female character, Klara, most intriguing and mysterious... even though I did not understand her at all. And her brother, Tilman... how spooky he was! The story had a very satisfying ending, and I like that in a book... it doesn't have to be happy... but it does have to tie up the loose ends, and this book does that well.

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Mar 18, 2013 Kat Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kingston-writersfest, local, read-these-books

Love, grief, Canada.

"What she never admitted, not to the grey-haired man, not to herself, not to anyone, was that there had never been a waltz, there had never even been a declaration, that all the pain and delight she later thought of as dancing was made known to her simply by the expression on a young man's open face.

"Years later when he came at last to love someone, the memory of this night would fall like rain into his mind: the gentle tenderness, the sound of falling water."

"You kill off a...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Marlene rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story will stick! I immediately became absorbed with the characters, the settings of rural southwestern Ontario and Vimy Ridge, and especially the construction of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in the 1930's. Recommended that one googles the statues of the memorial and watch the Battle of Vimy Ridge on YouTube to fully appreciate the story.

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About Jane Urquhart

She is the author of seven internationally acclaimed novels entitled, The Whirlpool, Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers, A Map of Glass, and Sanctuary Line.

The Whirlpool received the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Award). Away was winner of the Trillium Book Award and a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Un...more She is the author of seven internationally acclaimed novels entitled, The Whirlpool, Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers, A Map of Glass, and Sanctuary Line.

The Whirlpool received the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Award). Away was winner of the Trillium Book Award and a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Underpainter won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

The Stone Carvers was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. A Map of Glass was a finalist for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book.

She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass, and four books of poetry, I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan, and Some Other Garden. Her work has been translated into numerous foreign languages.
Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award, Calgary's Bob Edwards Award and the Harbourfront Festival Prize, and is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. In 2005 she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Recently, she was named the 2007 Banff Distinguished Writer.

Urquhart has received numerous honorary doctorates from Canadian universities and has been writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, the University of Toronto, and the University of Guelph.

She has also given readings and lectures in Canada, Britain, Europe, the U.S.A., and Australia.
In 2007 she edited and published The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, and in 2009 she published a biography of

Lucy Maud Montgomery as part of Penguin’s “Extraordinary Canadians” series.

Urquhart lives in Northumberland County, Ontario, Canada, and occasionally in Ireland.

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Quotes from The Stone Carvers

“This was the way it was going to be then, this road she was going to have to walk. She would always be thinking of him so that he would be beside her even when he wasn't there, making her joyous or miserable, but always, always controlling the colour of her days.” — 4 people liked it

“She knew she was a purveyor of costume, of disguise, a fabricator of persona, one who touched only the protective surface, never the skin, the heart. She was beginning, as a consequence, to envy almost everyone she met, to envy their small preoccupations, their carefully kept account books, the way they stood on streetcorners talking about farm machinery, the weather, the price of a bag of oats, fully connected for the moment to these ordinary things. Her connection continually slipped downstream, against the current, toward the swiftly disappearing past. What beyond the most cursory, practical knowledge of fashion, had the present to do with her?” — 3 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116491.The_Stone_Carvers?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348747247l/116491.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116491.The_Stone_Carvers?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart[/url]

The Stone Carvers

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