The Stone Carvers [Hardcover]

Jane Urquhart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2002

When the world was still reeling from the staggering losses incurred in the First World War, an unknown Canadian sculptor was raising a colossal monument in France, where so many of his countrymen had fought and died. Unveiled in 1936, the Memorial at Vimy Ridge still stands as a stark reminder of the more than 11,000 Canadians who gave their lives in France-and as a testament to the vision and single-minded obsession of its now-forgotten architect, Walter Allward.

It is against the backdrop of this incredible achievement that Jane Urquhart sets her intricately woven new novel. At the center of the story is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master woodcarver, who spends her childhood in a German-settled community in southwestern Ontario in the years leading up to the war. It is a childhood punctuated by tremendous losses: her mother dies of cancer when she is a teenager; her older brother disappears; and her brief but passionate love affair with Eamon O'Sullivan is cut short when he is killed in action. But Klara's inherited gift for carving will reunite her with her brother and bring her unexpected happiness.

In the tradition of Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong and Pat Barker's Regeneration, The Stone Carvers is vintage Jane Urquhart writing at the height of her powers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In her fifth novel, award-winning writer Jane Urquhart interweaves the sweeping power of big historical events with small but very moving personal stories. Klara Becker is the granddaughter of a woodcarver in German-settled southern Ontario. She has a love affair with a brooding, silent Irish lad who then goes off to fight, and die, in World War I. Meanwhile her older brother Tilman has literally snapped the ties that would have chained him to the family home, and vanished.

Of course, as in all great romantic epics, the two are destined to meet again. Tilman loses his leg in the war and experiences joyful belonging with an exuberant Italian immigrant family in industrial Hamilton, Ontario, before finally venturing home. Klara remains a spinster in her small town, sewing and working on and off for years on the figure of an abbess carved from wood. The novel culminates in the building of a huge stone monument to Canada's war dead in Vimy, France. Klara and Tilman are both compelled to visit the site of this insanely ambitious artistic obsession of real-life Canadian sculptor Walter Allward; both find that they have a personal struggle to overcome the past and learn to express love. Urquhart grasps her characters from outside and inside as precious few authors manage to do. She is, in her own way, a sculptor who carves a radiant and enduring tale from the elegant material of raw language. --Nigel Hunt

From Publishers Weekly

The bell-llike clarity of its prose initially masks the eloquent pathos of this Canadian bestseller by Urquhart (The Underpainter), which examines WWI through the experiences of siblings Klara Becker, whose first love, Eamon, enlists and never returns, and Tilman Becker, who loses one of his legs in the battle at Vimy Ridge in France. Their largely separate stories along with the evolution of Shoneval, their Ontario farming village form the core of this moving novel and converge in the 1930s, when the sister and brother travel to France to participate in the creation of Walter Allward's Vimy Memorial honoring some 11,000 Canadians missing in action after the Great War. Klara and Tilman share a knowledge of woodcarving, a legacy of their grandfather, a Shoneval pioneer. They end up putting their talents to work in the construction of the memorial and, in the process, rebuild their own damaged lives. The panorama of WWI serves as a powerful backdrop for Klara and Tilman's finely drawn, heartfelt stories and gives Urquhart the canvas on which to depict mature, sophisticated themes. Urquhart charts the collapse of the pastoral ideal an agrarian prewar Canada lured into the conflicts of Europe, losing a generation of young men as a result but her bigger theme is the possibility of redemption, achieved with great struggle, through love and through art. These are familiar premises, but Urquhart's deft, poetic prose and psychological acuity make this a stirring look at one of the signal events of the 20th century.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First edition. edition (May 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030449
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030446
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,594,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A journey, July 12, 2003

By 

Amanda Bennett "Wicked & Wordy" (Ottawa, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stone Carvers (Hardcover)

This book was the first I've read of Jane Urquhart's novels. I read reviews about it here on Amazon before I read the book, and I was worried that I would find it too long as some reviews suggested, but I loved it. I didn't find it long at all. In fact I couldn't put it down! I took it with me everywhere, even to the golf course! Ha. The descriptions of the work that went into the stone and wood carving performed in the book made me want to go out and buy a set of carving tools. Today I went out and bought two more of her books; Away and The Underpainter. I'm hoping I will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed this one.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the wait!, May 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stone Carvers (Hardcover)

As historical fiction, Jane Urquhart's new book "The Stone Carvers" had the same immense impact for me that Taylor Caldwell's "Dear and Glorious Physician" did many years ago. There are several good summaries of the plot above, so I won't go into that here. (I will say that the character of Tilman reminded me so much of Mary in Urquhart's "Away", though!) I've been fortunate to read lots of good Canadian literature recently such as "From Bruised Fell" by Jane Finlay-Young and "A Good House" by Bonnie Burnard. Although I was given "The Stone Carvers" as a gift in November, it was only recently, after finishing "What's Bred in the Bone" by Robertson Davies and wanting more good Canadian literature, that it felt like the time to read this. And it was. Once begun, I could not bear to put this book down each night. The characters' humanness and deeply felt emotions, like those in Urquhart's "Away", got under my skin and I could not wait to find out what happened as the story moved along. This book is intelligent in a way not many are these days, directly addressing the longings of the heart. In my estimation, you can't go wrong reading this book. After reading "Away", I had a deep longing to visit Ireland and Wales; now, having just read "The Stone Carvers", a visit to the monument at Vimy seems inevitable too. I love the quote from the review above about the redemptive nature of art - this book itself proves that to be true. Enjoy!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great Canadian novel, October 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stone Carvers (Paperback)

I really enjoyed reading this book. It brought back memories of my family's experience as immigrants to Canada and the culture we brought with us as artists and art lovers. The story of Vimy Ridge was extraordinary and in my opinioin was one of the most significant parts of the book. Most Canadians know little if anything about this WW1 historic event. This book would be an excellent read for all high school English and History students. As an artist I found the text revealing and meaningful.