The Night Stages

by Jane Urquhart

I have read and enjoyed other books by Urquhart but I did not enjoy this one as much as the others.  It seemed a bit disjointed.

The author has a beautiful way for writing and for conveying the atmosphere of Ireland where most of the story takes place.
The story is basically about a two women and two brothers and a dysfunctional family.

Niall and Kieran are brothers.  Their mother has a difficult tie delivering Kieran the younger boy and seems to be depressed, self-absorbed after the birth.  She has an affair with the local chemist and they commit suicide jumping over a cliff into the sea.  The boys father is devastated at the death of his wife and at the fact that she was unfaithful.  He keeps praising his older son and ignoring the younger one though both boys are also suffering.  The older brother becomes a successful student, athlete and a meteorologist like his father. The younger boy begins acting out and is eventually taken on by the family's housekeeper, he goes to live with her and she is the mother he never had.  The younger boy is of course jealous of all he attention his older brother gets and also of his lovely girlfriend.

The younger boy becomes and avid bicyclist and loves riding the rugged landscape.  He meets a man who encourages him to enter an Irish bicycle race and puts the boy on a rigid training regime.   There is some magical realism involved in some of his adventures.

The older brother has married his girlfriend but is having an affair with a woman from London who has moved to the area.  The woman had been a pilot during the war, ferrying planes.  Niall is now obsessed with finding out what happened to his brother.  This is surprising considering how horribly he treated him. As the book opens she has decided to leave Niall by leaving Ireland for Canada.  She arrives at the Gander International Airport for the plane to be refuelled but ends up stranded at the airport for several days because of fog.  While she sits in the airport she thinks about her life and studies the famous, huge mural by Kenneth Lockhead.  The story includes some background (real or fiction??) about his life.

When the race occurs we learn that Niall is competing as part of a team.  He is shocked to learn that his brother is also competing, as an independent.  He does not want to be bettered by his brother but Kieran wins many of the legs and becomes almost legendary, a crowd favourite.  Near the end of the race Kieran crashes and Niall's wife runs to Kieran.  Niall is shocked to realize there was something between them.

I found Kieran interesting, he was so passionate, so primal, so injured.  I couldn't really see the value of the story of the painter of the mural, as part of the novel.  I couldn't understand why Niall would all of a sudden be so interested in his brother.  As the book ends the woman, Tam has decided to return to Ireland.  Will she go back to Niall, or will she just live out her life there?  Not sure, but don't really care.

Maybe things would hang together better on a second reading.