Share for friends:

Read The Whirlpool (2001)

The Whirlpool (2001)

Online Book

Author
Rating
3.55 of 5 Votes: 4
Your rating
ISBN
0887546110 (ISBN13: 9780887546112)
Language
English
Publisher
playwrights canada press

The Whirlpool (2001) - Plot & Excerpts

This is a novel with many layers, complex and slow. The novel takes place in the summer of 1889.Patrick works for the government in Ottawa, but has been having issues and has come to stay with his aunt and uncle in Niagara Falls. He is also a published poet and his interest in nature has him wandering in the forest, staring at the river, and interested in a woman he sees on his forest wanderings.Fleda is the woman in the forest. Fleda's husband David McDougal is fascinated by the War of 1812 and even confesses to Patrick that he married Fleda because of her resemblance to Laura Secord. Fleda is not happen in the town and begins to live in a tent in a forest clearing, and David plans a house for the same location.When Fleda begins to realize that Patrick is watching her, she is both unnerved and flattered and wants to increase the connection with him, but her need has an outcome she didn't envision.In town, Maud is the widow of the undertaker, still in charge of the funeral home despite her husband's death. Maud keeps a cupboard of the belongings of the floaters, the drowned people from the river and its famous falls. Maud has a young son, seemingly autistic whose behaviour connects these characters, and opens them to new experiences and ways of looking at things.This is a novel that examines how we respond to how others view us. And how that response changes their perception of us further.

This a strange, and yet very poetic novel. I have read Jane Urquhart before and like her writing style. The novel begins with an aging Robert Browning - nearing death in Venice, dreaming of Shelley. The novel ends with him too, and this is possibly the strangest aspect to the book - and not all that easy to understand - although he and Shelley are poets as is one of the characters in the main body of the novel. Water is also a theme- Shelley of course drowned as a young man, and the main part of the novel takes place in Niagra where the poet Patrick and the woman he becomes obsessed with (Fleda) are both drawn to the whirlpool. Maud the undertakers widow is left to clear up the bodies the whirlpool throws up. She has a strange child - only ever knowsn as The Child, whose behaviour suggests autism - but as this is 1889 that word is never applied to him. Each of the characters is obsessed with something, in this peculiar story of obsession and immagination.

What do You think about The Whirlpool (2001)?

Interesting novel dealing with the status of women in the late 19th century on the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. Two female characters seek their liberation in distinctly different ways. One begins by freeing herself from the materialism of living in a house (she lives in a large tent constructed by her husband, overlooking the whirpool)and immerses herself in Robert Browning. The other is the widow of the local mortician and she buries those who risk their lives going over the falls. Highlights the creative ways these two women see their way through the limit choices of their time.
—Judy

So readable, the translation of the words into your mind is so easy. I can hear, see, feel, touch everything, I felt thoroughly transported while reading. Is so refreshing to read because of the strangeness of the lyrics the story's voice intoned. Many books are wonderfully lyrical, but this book's lyrics weren't just good, but so different, so far apart, from any other book I've read. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this negatively, it doesn't bother me in this case, but the book wasn't strong. It was too flowing, changing, as one of the main metaphors of the book. It doesn't leave a lasting impressions, instead infinitely moves your sprit in a single present moment. It's too artist to be strong, and that's the beauty of it.
—Feathzzz

The Whirlpool evokes Urquhart's characteristic exploration of the ways that landscapes can embody memory and the general power of Place. Taking on the iconic setting of Niagara Falls with its larger-than-life evocation of a sense of wonder, Urquhart tells a tale that is fundamentally about the beauty of people and their ability to shift and change like the whirlpool they live next to. Equally a physical space and a dreamscape on which characters project their fears, desires, and identities, the Whirlpool itself comes to suck in identities and concepts, taking on imagery of sexuality, freedom, and, as a potential killer, of course it takes on imagery of death.Objects are never passive in Urguhart's work, always taking on memory, dreams, aspirations, and speaking to the personalities of the characters around them, and the beauty of the whirlpool, a swirling current of desire and the sublime, is a wondrous receptacle for Urquhart's imaginative vision.
—Derek Newman-Stille

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Read books by author Jane Urquhart

Read books in category Middle Grade & Children's