Changing Heaven

I really like Jane Urquhart. This is one of her early novels, and shows she has long had the ability to tell a good story. Here we have Ann, a professor who loves and studies the novel Wuthering Heights. She becomes involved with a fellow professor, but the relationship is one-sided with her feeling much more for him than he does for her. We also have the story of Polly, a balloonist, involved in a similarly one-sided relationship. Ms. Urqhart brings these two stories together in a magical way that I loved. The writing, as always, was excellent as were the characters.

This was a quirky little book but enjoyable. As with all Urquhart's books the writing was lovely.

Ann grew up in Toronto but her grandmother lived in a small town in rural Ontario. Ann's father was away from home a great deal so most of the time there was just Ann and her mother. They made frequent trips to the grandmother's house and Ann observed the countryside. Ann also read and one of her favourite books was Wuthering Heights. When she grew up she became a professor at an unnamed college. There she met and had an affair with an art history prof who specialized in Tintoretto. When she realized that this jerk was never going to love her she took off to the Yorkshire moors to write a book about the weather in Wuthering Heights. Along show more with Ann's story is a ghost story starring Arianna/Polly, a female ballooinist who also had an unfortunate love affair, and Emily Bronte.

I lost patience with both Ann and Polly for continuing to love men who were not good enough for them. I know it is a common occurrence. Goodness knows I had a few disastrous romances in my time but they couldn't seem to stay away from these guys. So that spoiled what could have been a really lovely book. I'll still continue to read Urquhart's work because she is a wonderful writer and when she gets a plot right it is a beautiful thing. show less

Tried and tried and tried to get into this, but it was just too cumbersome reading.