Away :: essays research papers

Away by Jane Urquhart is a complex novel that mixes romance, politics and family alone in to one flowing story. It follows the lives of many another(prenominal) different characters, but it is told through the memories of a woman named Esther. Esther attempts to sort through her great-grandmothers past, and her entire familys history. Away is a compel novel that captures the readers attention in the first few pages.      The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther OMalley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, memory board a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the polish off of the story. Esthers main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her familys past.      Mary is the next char acter that is introduced to the reader, and she is a very large part of the story. One day while Mary is at the beach a body washes up on the shore with many cabbages, kettles, and barrels of whiskey. She drags the body to the shore where she lies in the mans arms until he dies. This man was believed to buzz off been from an "other world" and this had a big effect on Mary. She locomote in love with this sailor, plane though he is dead, and it casts a sort of spell on her. Mary is known to the rest of the village as " absent" which means she is enchanted by this other world, the world of the sea. She felt as though her spirit were not in her humanly body anymore, and did not even consider herself Mary anymore. The spirits of the lake had given her a new name, Moira, and that is what she preferred to call herself. The villagers had no hope for, except for Father Quinn.      As the priest on the island, Father Quinn feels he must bring Mary back t o reality, but he finds it nearly impossible. He turns to his friend, Brian, who ends up convincing Mary to marry him. They have one child, Liam, and as famine and depression hit the island they live on, they are given the opportunity of a lifetime.