Jane Urquhart, left, released her latest novel in April, one week after her daughter, Emily, debuted her first book.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
There's a moment near the beginning of Emily Urquhart's new book, Beyond the Pale, when she finds herself sitting in her mother's study in the family cottage in Northumberland County, Ont., transcribing interviews and working on her dissertation, while her mother watches her granddaughter, Sadie, in the room outside. "Normally, this is where my mom writes, but lately she is more babysitter than novelist," she notes. It adds a rather peculiar layer to the narrative if aware of the branches of her family tree – Emily is writing at the desk of her mother, the novelist Jane Urquhart.
Not only does Jane appear as a character in Beyond the Pale, Emily's first book, which was published on March 31, but in an unusual bit of publishing serendipity, Jane's first novel in five years, The Night Stages, was published exactly one week later.
"It is unusual," says Emily, 38, sitting beside her mother in a coffee shop during an interview earlier this week while they both happened to be in Toronto. (Emily lives in Victoria, while Jane resides in Colborne, Ont.) "I wonder if this has happened in Canada before?"
Most likely not. The Urquharts are just the latest in a long line of literary families, though one struggles to recall a time books from both parent and a child have arrived in bookstores seven days apart. In Canada alone, to name a few, there's Linda Spalding and her daughter, Esta, a poet and screenwriter who co-wrote a novel with her mother; Michael Ondaatje and his son, Griffin, who has published two picture books; the late Mordecai Richler and his children Daniel, Noah, Jacob and Emma, who have all published books; the late poet Irving Layton and his sons, David, who has published a memoir and a novel, and Max, a poet; the late Morley Callaghan and his son Barry, an author and poet; David Gilmour and his son, Jesse, who published his debut novel last year; and Lisa Moore and her daughter, Eva Crocker, an award-winning writer who has a collection of stories forthcoming.
Anne Giardini, the author of two novels and the daughter of the late Carol Shields, says the children of authors face "the weight of expectations" when becoming writers themselves. She recalls reading the first review of her first book, The Sad Truth About Happiness, when it was published in early 2005, less than two years after her mother's death. "The whole review was how dare I write a book at all?" she says. "[The reviewer] was just offended that I would enter this territory – the sacred territory of Carol Shields."
It's understandable for readers to have certain expectations when the name on the spine of a book is familiar, even if the author is different. "I'm sure that people approached my book differently when it first came out and I'm sure that some readers were disappointed when they discovered that my stories and Dad's stories were so different," says the Giller Prize-nominated writer Alexander MacLeod, son of the late Alistair MacLeod, in an e-mail. "That reaction might seem kind of rough, but it's completely predictable and likely inescapable. Relationships are always there between different books and different writers, and readers are free to mark any continuities or discontinuities they think they see. At the end of the day, all fiction is compared to other fiction so I feel like I understand that impulse."
"In my personal case, I'm proud of Dad's stories and I appreciate his craft and his care so much that I would never purposely distance myself from his fiction," he continues, "but at the same time I'm glad that my stories managed to carve out their own territory and that I have my own project to work on."
The fact that Emily and Jane have written vastly different books may help. Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes grew out of an award-winning article that appeared in The Walrus in 2013; part memoir, part cultural history, it chronicles the birth of Emily's daughter, Sadie, who was diagnosed with albinism when she was a few months old, and Emily's research into the science and sociology of the condition. The Night Stages, on the other hand, is vintage Jane Urquhart, weaving together multiple stories including that of a thirtysomething woman stranded at Newfoundland's Gander airport, her ex-lover and his missing brother, a cyclist and the famed Canadian painter Kenneth Lochhead, who created the large mural in Gander's departures lounge, and who was a close friend of Jane and her husband, the artist Tony Urquhart.
In the case of the Urquharts, Emily says becoming a writer was an "organic" decision. "I never actively thought, 'I think I could do what my mom does,'" she says. "I just never thought I couldn't."
She didn't see her mother as different from other parents, nor was she wowed by the authors who frequented their house or whom she encountered while attending literary events with her mother, be it Timothy Findley, Mordecai Richler or Alice Munro. "It was just a part of my family," she says. "I understood that authors were people. Even very famous authors were still people with lives, with children."
On Tuesday evening, she attended another literary event with her mother. At a reception celebrating the publication of Beyond the Pale, Jane beamed while her daughter addressed the crowd. ("I feel like a stage mother," Jane told me earlier in the day. "I'm filled with enormous pride. I have to sort of tone it down in the presence of others.")
In the middle of Emily's speech, Sadie ran up and wrapped herself around her mother's leg. It might have been a preview of book launches to come; about a year ago, as Emily put the finishing edits on Beyond the Pale, Sadie approached her mother with a well-timed request.
"She said, 'Momma, you better get another chair at your table, because I'm going to be a writer, too,'" recalls Emily.
"I wonder what she will write?" says Jane, before answering her own question. "She'll be a poet."