A priest has a vision, to build a stone church. The image is a powerful one and remains at the heart of this subdued novel that triumphs through its calm, almost muted tone of storytelling "There was a story, a true if slightly embellished story, about how the Ontario village was give its name, its church, its brewery, its tavern, its gardens, its grottos, its splendid indoor and outdoor altars." The Stone Carvers could have become a simple, if complex and contrived romance. Instead Canadian poet and novelist Jane Urquhart's fifth novel acquires a mythic resonance through her inspired layering of cultures with personal histories, and her realist's handling of the passing of time and its effect.

The very act of carving in stone, is the merging of craft and time. The idea of tough physical labour creating monuments to defy time makes the narrative both of the day and of all time. Generations are evoked yet Urquhart avoids writing yet another family epic.

The strength of the novel lies in the opening mid 19th century sequences in which a young German priest, happily running his parish in Bavaria imagines he is being told to go to Canada. He laughs at the notion and then receives official word that he will be going to Canada to undertake a project supported by the innovative if crazy King Ludwig, benefactor of the Ludwig Missions. "Like every other man, woman and child in Bavaria, Father Gstir was well aware that King Ludwig was mad, and he knew that an interest in Canada was precisely the kind of course the King's mad mind was likely to take."

Young Father Gstir does not want to go. But within a year of receiving the bishop's letter and having travelled for six months, he stands in a pinewood forest. His efforts to establish a parish are funny but also impressive.

Almost a century later his story is local legend and an inspiration to those still living in the village, at least to the nuns in the convent and one spinster who "had her memories". She and the nuns "clung to the story, as if by telling the tale they became witnesses, perhaps even participants in the awkward fabrication of matter, the difficult architecture of a new world".

Urquhart moves between various time zones, guiding her characters. The young priest is an endearing character, determined to create a monument good enough to become a magnificent ruin. This device of creating memorials as a way of remembering and of being remembered runs through the book.

The priest's enthusiasm provides a spark in a novel that is slow moving, and quite detached, almost cold. The spinster's grandfather is the man who makes the priest's dreams come true. The continuity is deliberate without being overly contrived. Far stranger is another thread, that of the wanderlust of the young boy, Tilman, the spinster's older brother. His desires cause heartbreaking tensions within the family.

After her mother's death and the disappearance of her brother Klara, the spinster, a heroine of sorts, living with her father, becomes the object of a young Irish man's need. He conveys this through stubborn silences. Canada and Germany having become elements in one culture are further infiltrated by the arrival of the Irish man. Urquhart is clever in her handling of the developing relationships, the frustrations and suspicions. The physical detail of the daily life in the village and the girl's household as well as the historical references, all sit easily on the narrative.

But beyond the family story are far deeper concepts of desire and need. Klara' talents are really those intended for her absent brother. Into the private comes the public reality of war. Whereas much of Canada becomes caught up in the European conflict that proves even a new world remains connected to its older self, the village decides to remain apart - except for one man. Klara's reluctant move towards romance ends dramatically.

Early in the narrative we are told: "Klara served no master; she alone determined the tasks she would perform each day. And when she was quite young, romance had disturbed and illuminated her life, had cast its light and its shadow over her for one intense, confusing season."

Urquhart's deliberate, unadorned prose consistently lifts the story with its improbable developments, makes it more strange, somehow more intriguing. This is quite an achievement as throughout the novel, the reader continually unravels each mystery long before the story makes its disclosures.

Also effective is the constant shifting between wood and stone, the characters work in both materials.

We know Klara's heartbroken but determinedly optimistic grandfather, the priest's friend, believes in miracles. Yet for much of the book, the theme appears to be that of the burden achieving a dream creates. "People up and die, she thought, they up and die before they have their fill of the impossible . . . Father Gstir had died before the bell for his illogical church was blessed . . . They all had approached their desires naked, simple and glowing, without artifice or disguise, their wide-open hearts an uncomplicated target for annulment of one kind or another."

The intelligence of much of the writing counters the wilder developments and ensures that Klara's first romance avoids clichΘ. Urquhart is thoughtful and sustains a reflective, slightly earnest mood. While Klara never emerges as a real character, her musings are interesting. Many of the flashbacks also succeed as atmospheric set pieces.

It is ironic however that the weakest part of the narrative with its predictable romance is tied up with the dramatic conclusion and the culmination of the stone cutter theme.

Having cleverly avoided scenes from the front, Urquhart moves the action to Europe and returns Tilman to his hell. Klara's desire to work on the huge war memorial created by the Canadian sculptor Walter Allward, depicted here as a messianic obsessive, strains belief. But the sequences themselves are convincing and at times, moving.

In ways bigger than a war novel, The Stone Carvers is about loss and discovery. As Father Gstir watched "the last act of labour connected to the building of his church" the removal of the old one within it, "it seemed to him as if he were watching time itself being carried in the arms of youth".

She uses lyricism sparingly. There are echoes of Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje. The narrative ebbs and flows, yet is sustained throughout by the gently insistent tone of a storyteller with a tale to tell.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times