Customer Reviews

11 reviews

• R.M.

  I have just finished reading the book. I am dazzled. I wish I could express my awe and appreciation fo you and for your having brought Ted Harrison into it too. Thank you

• Katherine Gibson, accomplished author and keynote speaker http://www.katherinegibson.com

  Jan Stirling’s memoir of her friendship with Canadian artist Ted Harrison during the last years of his life is a warm commentary on an unlikely relationship that developed between the artist, then in his eighties, and the author, a talented musician, who was decades younger. It calls upon us to suspend our typical notion of male-female associations as the older man and younger woman explore many facets of life. She, a vivacious musician, he the contemplative philosopher share thoughts on family, marriage, happiness and friendship.
  Stirling used her experiences with Harrison as a framework on which to structure her deeply personal story. We learn about the inner life of the author, which reflects universal angst, through short chapters that end with reflections attributed to Harrison.
  To say this work is purely memoir would be misleading as the author employs the license of creative non-fiction to re-create dialogue and scenarios between herself and Harrison, who was deceased at the time of writing.
  While this work gives the reader an insider’s view of the eminent artist in his declining years, it more often gives us a window into the psyche of the woman who befriended him. This book will bring nostalgic pleasure to those who knew Ted Harrison as well as those who seek to better understand the artistic temperament of its author.
  

• Deborah Rogers Member of the Professional Editors Association of Vancouver Island

  Jan Stirling’s creativity is apparent to anyone who has heard her play. A talented and successful composer and musician, Jan has also recently published a wonderful memoir of the friendship she had with English-Canadian artist Ted Harrison.
  “You know how sometimes you meet someone and you just click?” Jan Stirling’s relationship with Ted Harrison was as simple as that. Described by an early reviewer as a love story, what Ted Harrison’s Rainbow Road really does is show you how people can connect on the most elemental level. Once they’ve done that, their friendship can take them anywhere.
  In 2007 when Ted was in his eighties and Jan in her forties the two Victoria, BC residents met at a Rotary Club meeting. Ted made a connection with Jan, touching her heart with his considerate compassion. Ted Harrison’s Rainbow Road tells how that friendship developed over the following years, until Ted’s death in 2015. Along with wonderful memories of time spent together, Ted Harrison – renowned painter, Order of Canada – also left Jan with a series of ‘word paintings’. These free form poems came about from a need Jan saw in Ted: “I saw that he wasn’t painting, and needed a creative outlet. I noticed when he spoke that he was so eloquent in the moment, and I would sometimes prompt him to speak about topics that came up naturally.” Those freestyle improvised words were captured and saved. Now the painter’s words have been revisited.
  Jan Stirling’s life was in flux at the time she met Ted, and the narrative of Ted Harrison’s Rainbow Road reflects some of the ups and downs of the musician’s journey. The book is filled with laughter though; sweet, funny moments captured in little vignettes. It’s impossible not to laugh at the image created by improvised poems such as ‘The Fall’:
  
  “The sun was shining as I walked with my friend down the streets of Sidney. Then I began to boast about having lost weight. No sooner had the boast floated from my lips, than my pants floated down to the ground. I was too late to save them …”
  
  It’s a tender reminiscence of a unique friendship. Jan approaches the memoir with a free form – perhaps jazz-inspired – touch, allowing the moments to build, one upon each other, and leaving the reader knowing a new side of the great painter, Ted Harrison.
  Ted Harrison's Rainbow Road is available now on Amazon and at bookstores. For more information www.janstirling.com
  

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