Audiobook11 hours
The Night Stages
Written by Jane Urquhart
Narrated by Charlotte Anne Dore
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
After a tragic accident leaves Tamara alone on the most westerly tip of Ireland, she begins an affair with a charismatic meteorologist named Niall. 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.
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.
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.
Author
Jane Urquhart
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.
Related to The Night Stages
Related audiobooks
The Movement of Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arturo's Island: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Railwayman's Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cave Dwellers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Peso: An Emilia Cruz Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Portrait: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Clovis Dig Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Coral Glynn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Silas Marner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Mutual Friend (Unabridged) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Voyage of the Morning Light: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Search for Heinrich Schlögel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Relation of My Imprisonment: A Fiction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heading Out to Wonderful Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Third Hill North of Town Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5So Big Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Life as a Fake Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Whale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSolar Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sacred Time: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Voyage of the Narwhal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kings of Sark: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Alibi: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Jolly Corner Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Small Hotel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Canterville Ghost (Librovox) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Wide Terraqueous World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRight after the Weather Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
General Fiction For You
American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Mist and Fury Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Wings and Ruin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Gods [TV Tie-In]: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dead Zone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Idea of You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/511/22/63: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fight Club Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Return of the King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Bookshop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Norse Mythology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Two Towers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Darker Shade of Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Under The Dome: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neon Gods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Night Stages
Rating: 3.607142857142857 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
28 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jane Urquhart is a great writer. She can really evoke a sense of place, and get into the feelings of her characters. This, however, is not my favourite book by her. I found it hard to relate to the main character, Tam. There were too many gaps in her story to let me really get to know her. And the interwoven story of Kenneth Lochhead, while interesting, didn't add to the main story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tamara has just completed a trans-Atlantic flight in an effort to escape an adulterous relationship and is feeling as though she has lost her bearings and doesn’t know which way to steer. She has 72 hours fogged in at the Gander airport to take stock of the arrivals and departures of her own life and figure out where she belongs in the world. As she waits for the fog to clear, the people depicted in an airport mural provide a foil for her to reflect on the times she has spent waiting or adrift in her own life back in post WW2 Ireland.This story has numerous threads. In addition to Tamara and her lover Niall, there is the journey of the mural’s artist in Canada and Niall’s brother Kieran back in Ireland. It felt like the book was mostly Kieran’s journey, and Tamara’s story was a bit lost, perhaps in the same way she lost herself in her relationship with Niall. The story is beautifully written especially the descriptions of the landscape. At a recent reading, Jane Urquhart revealed that she spends time in this corner of Ireland and wove in local landmarks and characters.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5On a flight from Ireland to New York, Tam is stranded for three days at the Gander Airport because of fog, “’fog that blinds and deafens and causes that stillness . . . followed by the kind of clarity that causes you to wince’” (229). The fog grounds her, but it is a mural in the terminal which inspires her to reflect – on her past life as an auxiliary pilot in WWII; her relationship with Niall, an emotionally remote meteorologist whom she has just left; and Niall’s search for Kieran, his missing brother. Interspersed with her reflections are vignettes of the life of Kenneth Lochhead, the artist who painted the mural, and that of Kieran after he left home.The mural is entitled Flight and Its Allegories and a major theme in the book is that of flight: Tam’s “ridiculous joy” (118) when flying a plane and her fleeing from Niall; Kieran’s flight from his family home after a tragedy and his happiness when exploring on his bicycle, “always happiest on higher ground” so he is described as a climber “’Always heading for the sky’” (156); Niall’s withdrawals from Tam, retreats so frequent that they form a “familiar pattern” (197). It is flight that becomes the sustaining metaphor throughout. When her job as an auxiliary pilot comes to an end after the war, Tam talks of having “lost her compass” (130) and finding herself “so essentially adrift” (254). In her relationship with Niall she realizes she has become “in every possible way, a passenger” (10) and feels she has “lost her bearings. Her instruments were lying to her. She would not be able to make her way, even with familiar territory under her, toward any kind of landing strip” (331).The characterization of Tam is unsatisfactory. In her youth she was adventurous as evidenced by her transporting planes throughout the war. When Niall entered her life, she exchanged her “then-vivid life” for one that is “very likely uninteresting”: “The young pilot she had been then, the young woman behind the controls, would have been disdainful of what she has become: a sombre person” (10). In her thirties she acquiesces to a life with a “Lack of certainty, ambivalence, impossibility, and no hope whatsoever of resolution” (385)? Why? The mural with its exploration of “speed and stasis” (221) is perhaps a symbol of Tam’s life but, unfortunately, she also seems as flat and inert and unknowable as the figures on the mural.I am unclear as to why Kenneth Lochhead is included as a major character. The flashbacks into his life before his painting of the mural suggest how his experiences affected his rendering, but he has no connection to Tam, Niall or Kieran. (I almost felt Lochhead was inserted because he was a friend of Urquhart’s husband.) For this reason, I take exception to Claire Messud’s assertion that Urquhart has a gift “for the melding of ideas, events and individuals into a significant whole.” I was not left with a sense of a whole.The book, until the An Post Rás, is very slow-paced. The first 350 pages have the reader feeling as if he/she is in the night stage of the bicycle race but there is no drinking nor does it serve as “an antidote of sorts to the day’s suffering” (355). I guess Tam’s interrupted journey in Gander is a night stage of sorts with the race resuming once she makes her decision about where she will continue from Gander. Unfortunately, if the night stage is too prolonged, interest is lost in the rest of the race though, indeed, “’It’s not finished yet’” (389).Though I have read and enjoyed most of Urquhart’s other novels, I was not as enamoured with this one. Though the language is lyrical, the novel does not feel like a cohesive unit, and parts are tedious like a long delay in a journey. I do, however, want to go and see Lochhead’s mural!