Emer McConnell rises at dawn to spend a day teaching music in the schools of rural Saskatchewan. As she drives along snow-covered roads in the gathering light, she begins another journey of memory and self-reflection that will change readers forever over the course of Jane Urquhart’s brilliant new novel.
Move through time as effortlessly as memory itself, In winter I get up at night brings Emer and her unique story to life. At age 11, she is seriously injured in a massive prairie storm – the “big wind” that changes her trajectory forever. As she recovers, separated from her family in a children’s ward, Emer gets to know her fellow patients, a memorable group that includes a child actor who performs in a traveling theater company, the daughter of a Doukhobor community, and the son of a left-wing Jewish farming community. The children are cared for by three nurses and two doctors, whom the ever-resourceful Emer calls Doctor Angel and Doctor Carpenter.
Emer’s story unfolds from this station, stretching like a dream through time and space, telling the stories of her mother’s involvement with a powerful yet mysterious teacher, of her brother’s budding spirituality that eventually leads him to the priesthood, of the remarkable lives of the nuns who care for her, and of the passionate yet distant love affair between Emer and an enigmatic man she calls Harp – a brilliant scientist whose great discovery has forever changed the lives of millions of people around the world.
In luminous prose and with intoxicating nuance and depth, Jane Urquhart traces an unforgettable life while also examining some of the biggest themes of the 20th century – colonial expansion, scientific progress, and the dark forces that seek to divide societies along racial and cultural lines. In winter I get up at night is a masterpiece of imagination and self-exploration from one of the greatest writers of our time. (By McClelland & Stewart)
Jane Urquhart is a novelist and poet. In 2005 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Urquhart has written seven critically acclaimed novels. In 1994 she received the Marian Engel Award, now the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. Her debut The whirlpool received the Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Prize for the best foreign book) in France. The speculative novel from 1993 Away won the Trillium Award, was a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and participated in Canada Reads 2013, where it was defended by Charlotte Gray.
She received the 1997 Governor General’s Literary Award for The underpainterThe novel was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The stonemasons was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the 2001 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She has also published four volumes of poetry and a short story collection entitled A number of things.
Other books by Jane Urquhart
