Jane Urquhart writes Sanctuary Line from the back of her head and not even she sees the surprise ending
Sanctuary Line, Jane Urquhart’s latest effort, is the most compelling and clever piece of fiction I’ve encountered in the last year. A love story set around an orchard in Southern Ontario, Urquhart plays with foreshadowing. She had me thinking that this gut-wrenching family tragedy was evolving one way only to pull the proverbial carpet out from under my feet and wallop me with an ending I didn’t see coming.
During an interview with Urquhart, she told Hour that her writing style is unconscious and declared that the closing chapters of the novel startled her as well. "To be honest, it surprised me too. I wasn’t sure where I was headed."
Urquhart said that when she began Sanctuary Line, she had no map or formula. "I begin novels with a number of things that interest me in an acute kind of way. And I was interested in Mexican migrant workers, lighthouses and the war in Afghanistan and I wanted to bring all these elements together. So I developed this character who is sitting alone in a farmhouse that had collapsed as a result of the tragic disappearance of an uncle."
When asked how she managed to weave everything together so fluidly, Urquhart confessed that she is a notoriously patient writer who takes years to complete a novel. "It’s not something one intellectualizes. I let the back of my head work things out and the back of my head has always taken weird roads. The process of writing for me is a lot like reading. I don’t know what’s going to happen until the story reveals itself to me."
Sanctuary Line
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The first part of Sanctuary Line reads like a set of homespun tales about a family orchard on the shore of Lake Erie. Then suddenly, it takes a powerfully dramatic turn. The stories about the Butler clan are told by Liz, who has come back to live in the old farmhouse. These stories span the Butlers’ roots in 17th century Ireland to Liz’s own childhood. The characters are quite an intriguing bunch! There is also a lot of interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering information on apple-farming, barn-raising and small town life; all of it so well-written in Urquhart’s style. Everything changes in the last 75 pages when Urquhart expands on events she’s only hinted at earlier. Suddenly a novel full of small pleasures becomes a story charged with big emotions. If you can get through some of the slow parts, you will be rewarded in the end.