The Stone Carvers

Rating:
Summary: An interesting history lesson
Review: I don't read many books but I was very aware of all the hype surrounding The Stone Carvers from various media sources. The village of Formosa, on which Shoneval is based, is also familiar to me so the historical aspect of the book really intrigued me.
Huge disappointment, to the point where I may never buy a new book again. There are lots of classics out there that await me.
The Stone Carvers was just so dreary that after the first 100 pages I wondered if anything was going to happen. Okay, so some background was required for the construction of the cathedral but the story line seemed stuck in the 1850's. The characters, in a way, seemed Dickensian in conception but without personalities. Dull, dull, dull! Imagine a suiter coming over to his girlfriend's kitchen every night and not saying anything - totally unbelievable! He wasn't even leering at her.
The book's cover is grey and so is the story. There's no plot, no climax, no colour, no fun. My apologies to Jane Urquhart who researched for months, maybe years, found a truly historic setting (Battle of Vimy Ridge), and put together a successful novel. But I paid 30 bucks for The Stone Carvers and it wasn't worth it. Sorry!

Rating:
Summary: Slow, plodding, shines at times
Review: I enjoyed much of this novel, but I have not been swayed either in finishing the book or by the lofty reviews that this is a great book. It's a good book -- it's solid, but not spectacular. Tilman is a fine character, a young man who knows from a very young age that his role is not to live in one place, but to roam. His sister Klara absorbs the family's obsession with carving in his absence. She falls for the silent Irishman, Eamon, and watches him go off to war.

Eventually a few of these characters make their way to Vimy to participate in the completion of the memorial -- an insufferable pilgrimage that to me does not work at all. I understand that Vimy is the crescendo of the novel, but to me it's an unlikely and uninteresting finale.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the wait!
Review: If this book were a movie, the first scene might carry the caption June 1934, and the camera would pan across the vast unfinished Vimy Memorial being built near Arras in France. Workers would be chipping away at the imposing base of the structure, painstakingly carving into the white stone the name of one of the more than 11,000 soldiers whose final resting place was unknown... other workers would be on scaffolding or suspended from ropes, five stories high, chiselling statues from the massive pillars as the wind whistles by them.
Then the scene would shift, perhaps the camera itself passes through a cloud, and emerges in the small village of Inzell, Bavaria... and the caption now reads May, 1866. A contented young priest is silently praying to the Creator of all the beauty that surrounds him. Suddenly, as he is distracted by a rare wildflower, he believes he hears the voice of God giving him a very clear directive "Go to Canada. There is much work for you to do there."
My imagination is aided by the fact that this is (almost) exactly how Jane Urquhart begins her book. She reaches back a half century to set up the background for the main timeframe of the novel, which will be the few years just prior to the outbreak of World War I and the 15-20 years following the end of the War. The above mentioned priest (Father Gstir) reluctantly obeyed God's instructions and came to the wild frontier of Upper Canada, where he successfully founded the village of Shoneval, Ontario. Here, he serendipitously meets the son of a Bavarian miller, Joseph Becker, a wood-carver by trade. Father Gstir commissions Joseph to build a church and adorn it with his carvings.
The scene changes yet again, and a generation has passed. The rest of the book, now focuses on Joseph's grand-daughter... the "geist-ridden" spinster Klara Becker. We now see Klara growing up in a relatively peaceful family that does end up having its slightly dysfunctional moments. Grandfather Joseph has his heart set on Klara's younger brother Tilman, hoping that he can make a true carver of the boy. As it turns out, Tilman is an extremely claustrophobic child whose almost daily tendency is to run away from home. It is Klara who is more interested in carrying on the carving tradition and she has obvious skill with the chisel on wood. She inherits Joseph's perfectionism or "a need for order" and creates beautiful works. Klara's parents make a terrible decision one day with regard to confining the boy Tilman, and with the help of Klara, he escapes and seems to run away this time for MAYBE what looks like forever. Meanwhile, Klara experiences her first taste of love with a neighbouring lad by the name of Eamon O'Sullivan, but when war breaks out... (I won't say what happens). During the war years, Klara begins to shut down inside... just as her soul was beginning to spread itself out, it seems to her that it had been unjustly shot down. Her long blonde hair is now in a knot, and she takes on the role of spinster. Meanwhile Klara's parents pass away, and Tilman is out having adventures all of his own, landing a job and his first sense of permanence in the industrial city of Hamilton. Tilman the soldier is himself "wounded out" of the War, and over a decade passes before he hobbles back to visit his sister. This wonderful latter half of the book (appropriately entitled "The Monument") is all about the rebirth of dreams, the following of convictions, the importance of believing in a cause... the beauty of using our creative energy to honor others. It is clear at the end of the book that it is never too late for us to taste and drink of the joys of living. Brother and sister end up across the Atlantic, at the very plot of ground that represents the greatest loss of each of their lives... and both receive an individual healing in a way that neither could have ever imagined for themselves. At a recent reading I attended, the author was asked what this book was about. She replied, "It is about the redemptive nature of art."
Perhaps it would be fitting in the last scene of the movie of this book if the camera panned across the completed monument, now clear of all human presence... the camera again passes through a cloud, only this time it does not ever emerge at all... and the narrator says "And so the impossible happens as a result of whims that turn into obsessions." And again, my imagination is indebted to the author who put this sentence on the last page of her book.

Rating:
Summary: Workmanship Indeed
Review: Jane carved this book, as it builds towards its moving climax slowly - very slowly at times. A great history lesson and in a sense, history within history. The Stone Carvers reveals one of what surely are a thousand small but significant tales woven deeply within the larger conflict of World War One. Very satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant book by a stellar author
Review: Jane Urguhart slowly and carefully, chisel chip by chisel chip, sets powerful but delicate personal stories against the sweeping backdrop of World War I. It's the story of Klara and her brother Tilman, separated for years and living those intervening year in very different ways. Their eventual reunion is the climax on which the story turns, and you won't be disappointed as they learn together how to move beyond their pasts and (it sounds trite, but it isn't) find love.
Highest recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Sweeps across three countries and two centuries
Review: The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart tells the story of two long-estranged siblings and a visionary 19th Century German priest, and an obsessive sculptor by the name of Walter Allward. Klara Becker (the granddaughter of a master carver), is a seamstress haunted by a love affair cut short by World War I and the frequent disappearances of her brother Tilman. After a number of years Klara and Tilman find themselves involved with Walter Allward's ambitious war memorial at Vimy, France. This highly recommended, deftly abridged, flawlessly recorded, CD audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Nicky Guadagni who does full justice to Jane Urquhart's panoramic novel whose stories and characters sweep across three countries and two centuries.

Rating:
Summary: A journey
Review: 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.