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The Whirlpool
Written in luminous prose, The Whirlpool is a haunting tale set in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in the summer of 1889. This is the season of reckless river stunts, a time when the undertaker’s widow is busy with funerals, her days shadowed by her young son’s curious silence. Across the street in Kick’s Hotel, where Fleda and her husband, David McDougal, have temporary rooms, Fleda dreams of the place above the whirlpool where she first encountered the poet, a man who enters her life and, unwittingly, changes everything. As the summer progresses, the lives of these characters become entangled, and darker, more sinister currents gain momentum.
The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart’s first novel, received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France and marked the brilliant debut of a major voice in Canadian fiction.
The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart’s first novel, received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France and marked the brilliant debut of a major voice in Canadian fiction.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
7 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Jane Urquhart
41 books378 followersShe 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Urq...
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Urq...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
May 9, 2017
This was Urquhart’s first novel, published in 1986. The overall feel reminded me of A.S. Byatt (especially The Virgin in the Garden) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Set in 1889 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, it brings together four characters who are, each in their separate ways, stuck in the past and obsessed with death and its symbolic stand-in, the whirlpool.
Maud Grady is the local undertaker’s widow and takes possession of all the corpses of those who’ve tried to swim the Falls. She has a pair of horses called Jesus Christ and God Almighty (why not?), and a creepy young son who starts off mute and then becomes an expert mimic, delivering random fragments of conversation. Major David McDougal is fixated on the War of 1812, while his wife Fleda camps out in a tent, reading Victorian poetry, especially Robert Browning, and awaiting a house that will seemingly never be built. Local poet Patrick sees Fleda from afar and builds up his own romanticized ideas about her.
Each of these narratives is entertaining, but I was less convinced by their intersections – except for the brilliant scenes when Patrick and Maud’s son engage in wordplay. In particular, I was unsure what the prologue and epilogue, in which Robert Browning, dying in Venice, is visited by images of Shelley’s death by drowning, were meant to add to the book.
This is the second novel I’ve read by Urquhart, after her more recent Sanctuary Line. I admire her writing but have found that her plots don’t always come together. However, I’m sure to try more of her work: I have a copy of Away on the shelf, and Changing Heaven (1990) sounds unmissable – it features the ghost of Emily Brontë!
[Bought from a Lambeth charity shop for 20p.]
Maud Grady is the local undertaker’s widow and takes possession of all the corpses of those who’ve tried to swim the Falls. She has a pair of horses called Jesus Christ and God Almighty (why not?), and a creepy young son who starts off mute and then becomes an expert mimic, delivering random fragments of conversation. Major David McDougal is fixated on the War of 1812, while his wife Fleda camps out in a tent, reading Victorian poetry, especially Robert Browning, and awaiting a house that will seemingly never be built. Local poet Patrick sees Fleda from afar and builds up his own romanticized ideas about her.
Each of these narratives is entertaining, but I was less convinced by their intersections – except for the brilliant scenes when Patrick and Maud’s son engage in wordplay. In particular, I was unsure what the prologue and epilogue, in which Robert Browning, dying in Venice, is visited by images of Shelley’s death by drowning, were meant to add to the book.
This is the second novel I’ve read by Urquhart, after her more recent Sanctuary Line. I admire her writing but have found that her plots don’t always come together. However, I’m sure to try more of her work: I have a copy of Away on the shelf, and Changing Heaven (1990) sounds unmissable – it features the ghost of Emily Brontë!
[Bought from a Lambeth charity shop for 20p.]
July 28, 2017
Pure Poetry
Of the seven Jane Urquhart novels I have read, this, her first (1986, but recently reissued in Canada), may be the least eventful viewed simply as a story, but it is unquestionably the most evocative as a piece of pure poetry. It begins and ends with a real poet; Urquhart's prologue and epilogue describe Robert Browning's last day of life in 1889, wandering through unfamiliar parts of Venice, haunted by the spirit of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet who died young of drowning over half a century before, but whom Browning thought of as a spirit of a different element, the air, calling him an eagle, the Sun-Treader. The main story also takes place in 1889, in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Browning is the favorite poet of Fleda McDougal, one of the main characters, who often jots down evocative passages in her notebook. One of these, from "Amphibian," might almost have been the epigraph for the entire book:
Urquhart will return to autistic characters again, most notably in A Map of Glass. She will create other characters who reject the world for a life of the spirit, as in Away. She will continue to be fascinated by artists of all kinds, in The Underpainter and The Stone Carvers especially. She will write more novels in the spirit of lament for a vanished rural past, most recently Sanctuary Line . And she would continue her romance with the English Romantics, as in Changing Heaven , which channels the spirit (literally) of Emily Brontë. There is a palpable aura that emanates from all her work, but it shines here in its purest form, being so little encumbered by the mechanics of plot. Going back to the last stanza of the Browning above, the book is about the emancipation of passion and thought, those things that cannot be achieved through mundane action or even through the literalism of language. It is about what we substitute for heaven: a poetry not of words but of ideas. And its central symbol is the Whirlpool. Maud performs her own rituals to give spiritual identity to the drowned people who are found there. Her child, liberated by the whirlpool of his mind, creates a new order out of seeming chaos. For Fleda, the whirling waters are the visible part of the turning aether that lifts her free from temporal concerns. The poet Patrick, his thoughts aloft but unable to fly, determines to swim the pool. Another Byron conquering the Hellespont, or poor tragic Shelley, the drowned Sun-Treader? It hardly matters, for in this miracle of a novel, Jane Urquhart, a poet herself, has done the almost impossible: tied the aery world of the Romantic poets to the very real history, landscape, and even streetcars of a vanished Canada.
Of the seven Jane Urquhart novels I have read, this, her first (1986, but recently reissued in Canada), may be the least eventful viewed simply as a story, but it is unquestionably the most evocative as a piece of pure poetry. It begins and ends with a real poet; Urquhart's prologue and epilogue describe Robert Browning's last day of life in 1889, wandering through unfamiliar parts of Venice, haunted by the spirit of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet who died young of drowning over half a century before, but whom Browning thought of as a spirit of a different element, the air, calling him an eagle, the Sun-Treader. The main story also takes place in 1889, in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Browning is the favorite poet of Fleda McDougal, one of the main characters, who often jots down evocative passages in her notebook. One of these, from "Amphibian," might almost have been the epigraph for the entire book:
But sometimes when the weatherFleda is most certainly determined to "try a life exempt." Moving out of the stuffy hotel in which her husband, military historian David McDougal, has housed her, she spends her days and most of her nights in a clearing in the woods overlooking the Niagara whirlpool, two miles below the Falls. David is building her a house there, but her dream home is a realm of the mind, not a thing of walls and angles. Fleda is by no means the only obsessed character in the book. She is observed by a young poet named Patrick, who catches sight of her accidentally through his binoculars while walking in the woods, and becomes obsessed with watching her unseen. But Patrick is no ordinary Peeping Tom; for him, Fleda is a pure nature spirit on the order of Shelley's skylark, and he has no idea what to do when he meets the real person. Not that Fleda's husband would have noticed anything, for he is obsessed by a rabid anti-Americanism, and his excavation of a local battle site to prove that Canada actually won the War of 1812. A fourth character, Maud Grady, the young widow of the local undertaker, seems normal enough in herself, but her young son appears to suffer from a form of autism that at first makes him unable to speak but later has him spewing out words with no logical connection to the things he is describing, but certainly a poetic one; the exchanges between this child and Patrick are especially delightful.
Is blue and warm waves tempt
To free one's life from tether
And try a life exempt
From worldly noise and dust
In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought—why just
Unable to fly, one swims!
Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky
We substitute, in a fashion
For heaven—poetry.
Urquhart will return to autistic characters again, most notably in A Map of Glass. She will create other characters who reject the world for a life of the spirit, as in Away. She will continue to be fascinated by artists of all kinds, in The Underpainter and The Stone Carvers especially. She will write more novels in the spirit of lament for a vanished rural past, most recently Sanctuary Line . And she would continue her romance with the English Romantics, as in Changing Heaven , which channels the spirit (literally) of Emily Brontë. There is a palpable aura that emanates from all her work, but it shines here in its purest form, being so little encumbered by the mechanics of plot. Going back to the last stanza of the Browning above, the book is about the emancipation of passion and thought, those things that cannot be achieved through mundane action or even through the literalism of language. It is about what we substitute for heaven: a poetry not of words but of ideas. And its central symbol is the Whirlpool. Maud performs her own rituals to give spiritual identity to the drowned people who are found there. Her child, liberated by the whirlpool of his mind, creates a new order out of seeming chaos. For Fleda, the whirling waters are the visible part of the turning aether that lifts her free from temporal concerns. The poet Patrick, his thoughts aloft but unable to fly, determines to swim the pool. Another Byron conquering the Hellespont, or poor tragic Shelley, the drowned Sun-Treader? It hardly matters, for in this miracle of a novel, Jane Urquhart, a poet herself, has done the almost impossible: tied the aery world of the Romantic poets to the very real history, landscape, and even streetcars of a vanished Canada.
June 25, 2015
There is a dreamy, elusive quality to Urquhart's writing that draws me in. Her writing is ethereal and could best be described as lightly skimming a water's surface. What this book missed in mark by way of story - all of the pieces didn't quite click together smoothly enough for me - it made up for in spades by way of mood.
September 10, 2022
Whirlpool ('Le tourbillon") est un roman fort agaçant. On y trouve des personnages a peine crédible qui fait des gestes bizarres. On ne pleure pas quand ils disparaissent dans les tourbillons près des chutes de Niagara. Pour ceux qui veulent connaitre Jane Urquhart, je recommande plutôt "The Underpainter" ("Le peintre du lac") ou "The Stone Carvers" ("Les amants de pierre").
July 21, 2019
Jane Urquhart once again tackles the theme of obsession - obsession for another person, for place, and for the past. I really enjoyed this unusual novel, with its balance of the mundane and the mystical.
October 14, 2012
Set in Niagara Falls. The whirlpool comes after the falls, and the book centers on the lives of the people who lose their lives there every year. Very dreamlike and beautiful. Her first novel.
February 14, 2023
Weird, but interesting book. Kind of circular, although maybe that's intentional because whirlpools themselves are. Kinda neat to have gone to the glen a few times this past year and have the backdrop of niagara falls while reading it. It picks up as you go along. Would've loved to see how the boy ended up.
August 27, 2020
The lives of four people interlock in the town of Niagara Falls, Ontario, in the summer months of 1889: Maude Grady, the widow of the town undertaker, left to run the business and care for her oddly silent son (never named!) when an epidemic carries off her husband and in-laws; Major David McDougal, an anti-American historian obsessed with the War of 1812 and most especially Laura Secord; his poetically-minded wife Fleda who spends much of her time alone in the woods near the title whirlpool of the Niagara River; and the poet Patrick (is his surname ever given?), in the area for naturalistic pursuits as a rest cure and a break from his wife, who watches Fleda from a distance, then gradually interjects his life into hers and David's. -- An odd book. The author has a lovely way with words at times ("There it [the piano] stood, so calm, so monumental, discreetly keeping its potential for music intact during times of silence.") and captures the place so vividly: during the summer months, Maud's business sees a higher incidence of bodies related to fatalities at Niagara Falls, and she has many mementos/effects of the deceased in her office. The book seems almost haunted by the Whirlpool (Patrick announces his intention to swim it) and Maud's small son, who begins to speak words he has heard...to eerily parrot people whom he hears. Thrown in for good measure, there are also the curious Prologue and Epilogue, which deal with the final hours in Venice of the life of English poet Robert Browning in December 1889. On the whole, however, not an altogether satisfying reading experience -- at least for this reader. I desperately wanted to like this more than I did.
June 6, 2010
Jane Urquhart has written two of my favorite books (The Underpainter and Away A Novel. Her more recent The Stone Carvers retained some of her splendid sense of place, but it didn't win me over like her earlier books.
When I sought out The Whirlpool, I was unable to find a US edition. That made me uneasy, so I shelved the book for years until a night of insomnia left me roaming the bookshelf for distraction.
The Whirlpool is definitely a first novel. Despite its relatively short length the book seems much longer than its fatter siblings (The Underpainter 368pp., Away 368 pp., The Stone Carvers 400pp.). The ending's eventual arrival came as a relief from tedious detail and an assumption that the readers be deeply invested in the poetry of Robert Browning.
If you're new to Jane Urquhart's writing, please don't judge her solely on this first work. The Underpainter is a much better introduction to her complex and deeply geographic fiction.
When I sought out The Whirlpool, I was unable to find a US edition. That made me uneasy, so I shelved the book for years until a night of insomnia left me roaming the bookshelf for distraction.
The Whirlpool is definitely a first novel. Despite its relatively short length the book seems much longer than its fatter siblings (The Underpainter 368pp., Away 368 pp., The Stone Carvers 400pp.). The ending's eventual arrival came as a relief from tedious detail and an assumption that the readers be deeply invested in the poetry of Robert Browning.
If you're new to Jane Urquhart's writing, please don't judge her solely on this first work. The Underpainter is a much better introduction to her complex and deeply geographic fiction.
August 28, 2017
I do appreciate the quality of Urquhart's writing and language and poetic style indeed and this novel was all so very symbolic, but honestly I found it a bit boring and couldn't really get the point of it, the role of some characters and how they interconnect with one another - the whole about Maud, for instance, the undertaker's widow whose husband loved spiders with her weird (autistic?) child doesn't really seem so fundamental in the story, as well as the prologue and epilogue about Browning. I get the metaphoric meaning of it: instincts, passion and nature (Shelley, Fleda, the whirlpool) versus architecture, order and planning (Browning, the husband, the child, the house) and the way the poet idealizes Fleda, how they all live a bit out of reality, but still, in the end, I didn't really see the point of it all, except for its remarkable poetic, dreamy quality.
September 8, 2016
Set in the summer of 1889, is the beauty of Niagara Falls which is amazing to those who journey there. People have the ability to shift and change, some like forest wanderings, and others like the whirlpool. Fleda is the woman in the forest, who lives in a tent, realizes that Patrick is watching her, which she is both unnerved and flattered. She wants to increase the connection with him, but her need has an outcome she didn't envision. Maud, the widow of the undertaker, still in charge of the funeral home despite her husband's death. Maud's young son, autistic, whose behaviour connects these people, and opens them to new experiences and ways of looking at things.
October 5, 2017
I like Urquart's style and this is her first novel. I have read many of her others. Five main characters, Maud, widow of the undertaker and her son who talks in random nouns or action phrases: Fleda the forest nymph (she loves being outdoors and lives in a tent in the forest) and her husband, retired military man David and Patrick unless you also count Browning and Shelley. The story is set around Niagara Falls and the whirlpool in the river on Fleda and David's land. The characters insect and criss cross and although there is a sadness to the tale (the river and falls drown many people) the characters meander through each other's lives. A good read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 19, 2010
"The Whirlpool is a jewel of a book: its finely polished facets are full of light, yet suggest numerous depths … Urquhart's moody, incisive and shimmering prose, her cleverness and wit soar."
— Toronto Globe and Mail
"Urquhart's dreamy, circular prose draws the reader in as surely as her characters are pulled to their destiny by the inescapable suction of the whirlpool. Highly recommended."
— Library Journal
"A strange and sensual first novel. . . Miss Urquhart is a special writer, worth watching on both sides of Niagara Falls."
— The New York Times
— Toronto Globe and Mail
"Urquhart's dreamy, circular prose draws the reader in as surely as her characters are pulled to their destiny by the inescapable suction of the whirlpool. Highly recommended."
— Library Journal
"A strange and sensual first novel. . . Miss Urquhart is a special writer, worth watching on both sides of Niagara Falls."
— The New York Times
January 30, 2018
Does it ever seem to you that some books are written not as pleasure reads, but specifically for dissection and discussion in a dreary English literature classroom somewhere?
This book sure seems that way.
Yet I read it for pleasure, without anyone harping on me about symbolism and allegory, and I skipped all the poetry, and I liked it.
This book sure seems that way.
Yet I read it for pleasure, without anyone harping on me about symbolism and allegory, and I skipped all the poetry, and I liked it.
March 5, 2012
My first entry into Urquharts' world where water falls play a significant part in the weaving of a story about a summer in Niagara Falls and the magic the tragedy and magic that happen there in 1869.
*sigh* I should re-read all I have read and start the new!
*sigh* I should re-read all I have read and start the new!
August 19, 2012
I was quite disappointed with this book, having absolutely *loved* Away. I found The Whirlpool to be depressing and generally blah. Jane Urquhart really is a lovely writer - this book just wasn't for me.
October 12, 2016
Read while on a trip to Niagara Falls, Canadian side. Found it to be a little weird. Never fully connected the son in the story. Enjoyed Patrick and his poetry and his obsession with Fleda and the "dancing in and out of each other's life".
February 20, 2017
I picked this up because I had so enjoyed "Away". This rather confused me and I was left feeling I didn't know what Urquhart was getting at. It also ends pretty abruptly.
I shall read more of her novels but this won't be a favourite.
I shall read more of her novels but this won't be a favourite.
February 21, 2012
A beautiful story told in shimmering prose.
April 21, 2015
Multi-form storytelling at it’s best, and a must for sci-fi writers: because it isn’t sci-fi. I think you need to learn to write without the sci-fi before you can write successfully with it.
April 30, 2020
"In one sense the whirlpool was like memory; like obsession connected to memory, like history that stayed in one spot, moving nowhere and endlessly repeating itself. Above it, stars that appeared stationary traced their path across the sky, actually going somewhere, changing."
I recently saw a post asking to recommend a Canadian book. That got me thinking about Jane Urquhart and about how much I love her writing, how I haven't read any of her stories in years, and that I must rectify that 🤗. The Whirlpool is a poetic, beautifully written story taking place in Niagara Falls, Canada, in the 1860s. There is recently widowed Maude, who takes over the undertaker's business of her husband's family. Her (I believe) autistic son who is never named. Major David McDougall who is obsessed with Canadian military history. David's wife Fleda and a recent visitor, Patrick, who has come to Niagara Falls on the recommendation of his doctor. Both Fleda and Patrick are dreamers obsessed with Robert Browning (who makes a cameo appearance in both the Prologue and Epilogue.) Fleda and Patrick are the characters who set the haunting tone of the novel.
I found myself drawn to the story of Maude and her son but these 5 people's lives become intertwined to varying degrees. The story is unlike anything I have ever read and although you slowly understand where the story will ultimately take you, there are still a couple of twists and turns. I do not want to write anything more as you should read the story for yourself. Appreciate the language, the poetry, and enjoy this poignant tale. I cannot say it any better than the Booklist blurb on the cover: "Her exploration of the meaning of patience and loneliness and the influence of place on people's emotions is subtle and penetrating -- prose with the depth of poetry." Good stuff!
P.S. One of my favourite stories is Wuthering Heights. I had recommended it to a friend once who detested it and asked me what I could possibly love about it. At the time, it was hard for me to put a finger on it. But I told her about the feeling of the book, the presence of the Moors. This story is like that. The feeling it evokes with the ever present Falls and Whirlpool. Difficult to explain but remarkable.
I recently saw a post asking to recommend a Canadian book. That got me thinking about Jane Urquhart and about how much I love her writing, how I haven't read any of her stories in years, and that I must rectify that 🤗. The Whirlpool is a poetic, beautifully written story taking place in Niagara Falls, Canada, in the 1860s. There is recently widowed Maude, who takes over the undertaker's business of her husband's family. Her (I believe) autistic son who is never named. Major David McDougall who is obsessed with Canadian military history. David's wife Fleda and a recent visitor, Patrick, who has come to Niagara Falls on the recommendation of his doctor. Both Fleda and Patrick are dreamers obsessed with Robert Browning (who makes a cameo appearance in both the Prologue and Epilogue.) Fleda and Patrick are the characters who set the haunting tone of the novel.
I found myself drawn to the story of Maude and her son but these 5 people's lives become intertwined to varying degrees. The story is unlike anything I have ever read and although you slowly understand where the story will ultimately take you, there are still a couple of twists and turns. I do not want to write anything more as you should read the story for yourself. Appreciate the language, the poetry, and enjoy this poignant tale. I cannot say it any better than the Booklist blurb on the cover: "Her exploration of the meaning of patience and loneliness and the influence of place on people's emotions is subtle and penetrating -- prose with the depth of poetry." Good stuff!
P.S. One of my favourite stories is Wuthering Heights. I had recommended it to a friend once who detested it and asked me what I could possibly love about it. At the time, it was hard for me to put a finger on it. But I told her about the feeling of the book, the presence of the Moors. This story is like that. The feeling it evokes with the ever present Falls and Whirlpool. Difficult to explain but remarkable.
October 23, 2021
Having read all Jane Urquhart's previous novels, I was excited to come to this, her first. Whether it is music, or poetry or some other form of art, there is always something extra special for the reader or listener or viewer about that first piece, that one that revealed the artist to the world. "The Whirlpool" was such a treat, as it is so much different than Urquhart's later, weightier novels. I enjoyed the lyricism of "The Whirlpool," and the masterful unraveling of Urquhart's characters as they transform into what feels to me like a singular being by the end! "The Whirlpool" is elegant and beautiful, but I could not help but compare it to what came after. One gets the feeling Urquhart is warming up, stretching her writing muscles with "The Whirlpool," in preparation for the more difficult task to come.
"The Whirlpool" is well worth the read. Her descriptions of the geography put me right there, or at least made me want to be put into a time machine and taken to this world still being discovered. It is also a very funny book, and had me laughing out loud several times. The character of David, though not the most introspective of characters (he is intentionally written that way), is so serious and particular as to be hilarious and could be a novella of his own! Enjoy "The Whirlpool," then go out and read "The Stone Carvers" or "Away" all over again. All are wonderful in their own unique way.
"The Whirlpool" is well worth the read. Her descriptions of the geography put me right there, or at least made me want to be put into a time machine and taken to this world still being discovered. It is also a very funny book, and had me laughing out loud several times. The character of David, though not the most introspective of characters (he is intentionally written that way), is so serious and particular as to be hilarious and could be a novella of his own! Enjoy "The Whirlpool," then go out and read "The Stone Carvers" or "Away" all over again. All are wonderful in their own unique way.
April 16, 2019
Set during the summer of 1889 in Niagara Falls, Canadian side, and bracketed by the final days of Robert Browning in Venice the novel follows a small cast of characters interacting on the edges of this town. Fleda spends her time in the forest living in a tent on the site where they are building a house, Maud runs the funeral business after her husband died and watches/ignores her young four-year-old. Partick skulks the wood mixing women and landscape together and Major David spends his time with the historic battles in his head. All the people are quite odd, but also quite interesting.
The titular whirlpool is part of the river near the site of Fleda and David's future home and is a force of nature in its own right as well as exerting a force on almost everyone near it. It plays a huge role in the lives of these characters in one way or another as they explore, one way and another, what is real and what is imaginary and why there are distinctions between them.
The titular whirlpool is part of the river near the site of Fleda and David's future home and is a force of nature in its own right as well as exerting a force on almost everyone near it. It plays a huge role in the lives of these characters in one way or another as they explore, one way and another, what is real and what is imaginary and why there are distinctions between them.
May 12, 2020
The prose in this book is like poetry: very precise, every word is meaningful, lovely to read. This makes a lot of sense since poetry is one of the thematic undercurrents. For me, it would have been better to have read this at a few sittings, if possible. I think there is a lot in here that I will see the next time I read it. I did feel very uncomfortable during the "dark" chapters...pretty creepy! I was glad it didn't last too long. She explored a lot of things: change, communication, life and death, obsessions, perceptions, motivations, how we keep history, blindness and light. I loved the gentle humour, especially the horses named Jesus Christ and God Almighty. You'll have to read it to get it!
June 3, 2020
A very strange novel. I'm usually allergic to lyrical & poetic writing, and yet here its grounded in the gritty mundane everyday reality of a 19th century boom town. I found the first half particularly fascinating, setting out the stall for its interesting characters and how they fit into this environment. But the second half felt as if everyone started wandering off to somewhere where the plot dried up, and I found that the use of Niagara Falls itself was exploited far less than I thought it would be, considering its multi-level allure. It's certainly never boring, but it does end up being a puzzling head-scratcher of a book.
March 21, 2025
I was thrilled to find Jane Urquhart’s first novel in a thrift store recently. Jane is a Canadian author who weaves her stories around Canadian history! Having read at least 4 of her more recent books, it was interesting to read The Whirlpool and see the evolution of her writing in Jane’s unique story telling style. While I found the story slow at times, I found the interweaving of her characters intriguing, with an ending I didn’t expect. I would score 3.5 if that were an option. This is a must read for all Jane Urquart followers.
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July 26, 2023Reads like a gothic dream: the mute boy, the undertaker's widow, the poet, the woman in the woods.
While the opening salvo with Browning didn't do much for me, I was happily immersed in this strange world. Writing was lovely, Urquhart's sense of place and atmosphere is divine. I was very much there in the forest and garden. Just beautiful. Story might not be 'about' anything concrete, it meanders and whirls, wrapping up the characters in its current.
While the opening salvo with Browning didn't do much for me, I was happily immersed in this strange world. Writing was lovely, Urquhart's sense of place and atmosphere is divine. I was very much there in the forest and garden. Just beautiful. Story might not be 'about' anything concrete, it meanders and whirls, wrapping up the characters in its current.
March 24, 2020
Not her best effort. Made me realize how both men and women allow stalking as a normal. But it impacts both the man observing and worshipping the woman and the woman who is aware of the worshipper. Would not recommend this book
April 26, 2023
This is a novel in form, but it's actually a poem about memory and expectation, especially about the memories and expectations people have of other people more than of events...and about the place of poetry in experiencing and interpreting them. It's a short read and well worth the time.
June 30, 2024
4.5 only bc not really my kind of novel, but the excellent writing kept me reading and the fable-like sensibility reduced the importance of the relatively flat portrayals of the peripheral characters.
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