SOURCE: A review of Away, in Quill and Quire, Vol. 59, No. 8, August, 1993, p. 28.

In the following review, Wigston offers a favorable assessment of Away.

In Jane Urquhart's fictional renderings of the Canadian past, history is transformed into a series of fluid images. The title of her new novel, Away, reverberates with meaning. First, it indicates the mysterious condition suffered by Irish peasant women who have encountered a daemon lover from the "other world," the enchanted realm that now and then collides with this one. Second, it refers to the forced migration of the Irish to Canada, forced when the deadly scythe of the potato famine cut them down without mercy.

Urquhart's book juggles an ambitious sweep of history, myth, and geography, from County Antrim to the environs of Belleville and Port Hope (in what is now Ontario) in the early years of the Canadian union. Inevitably, some myths...