A vast, Modernist mural looming over the departure lounge at Newfoundland’s Gander International Airport, “Flight and Its Allegories”, painted in 1958 by Canadian artist Kenneth Lochhead,  is the organising motif of Jane Urquhart’s striking and intelligent new novel.  The Night Stages begins with former ­aviatrix-turned-illustrator, Tamara, en route from Ireland to New York in search of a new life. Stranded in Gander – self-styled “Crossroads of the World” – for three days during a fogbound stopover, she has ample time to contemplate the terminal’s famous painting, in which “everything is moving away from the centre”. Urquhart, author of seven previous novels and garlanded in her native Canada, proceeds to tur