Night Stages
'Jane Urqhuart charts the restless weather of the human heart in the same observant, inventive way the ancient Greeks mapped the constellations.' Washington Post
A magnificent, elegiac novel of intersecting memories that explores the meaning of separation and reunion, the sorrows of fractured families, and the profound effect of Ireland's harshly beautiful landscape on lives lived in solitude
After a tragic accident leaves Tamara alone on the most westerly tip of Ireland, she begins an affair with a charismatic meteorologist named Niall. It’s the 1950s, and Tamara has settled into civilian life after working as an auxiliary pilot in World War II. At first her romance is filled with passionate secrecy, but when Niall’s younger brother, Kieran, disappears after a bicycle race, Niall, unable to shake the idea that he may be to blame, slowly falls into despondency. Distraught and abandoned after their decade-long relationship, Tamara decides she has no option but to leave.
Jane Urquhart’s mesmerizing novel opens as Tamara makes her way from Ireland to New York. During a layover in Gander, Newfoundland, a fog moves in, grounding her plane and stranding her in front of the airport’s mural. As she gazes at the nutcracker-like children, missile-shaped birds, and fruit blossoms, she revisits the circumstances that brought her to Ireland and the family entanglement that has forced her into exile. Slowly she interweaves her life story with Kieran’s as she searches for the truth about Niall.
Jane Urquhart is the author of seven internationally acclaimed novels, a collection of stories and four books of poetry. She has received numerous awards and honours, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Trillium Award, the Habourfront Festival Prize, and le prix du meillieur livre etranger in France. She lives in Ontario, Canada, and occasionally in Ireland.