Book 44, The Stone Angel (1964) – Margaret Laurence
“In her best-loved novel, The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence introduces Hagar Shipley, one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. Stubborn, querulous, self-reliant – and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her – Hagar Shipley makes a bold last step towards freedom and independence.

As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a young girl growing up in a black prairie town; as the wife of a virile but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy; as a mother who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from her pioneer ancestors.

Vivid, evocative, moving, The Stone Angel celebrates the triumph of the spirit, and reveals Margaret Laurence at the height of her powers as a writer of extraordinary craft and profound insight into the workings of the human heart.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for The Stone Angel

My thoughts:
Brilliant book, just as good as I remembered (though I remembered no details, so it was like reading it fresh). I’m all teary and goopy ’cause I just finished it. Hagar’s a great character to read about but she would be hell to live with (and I don’t mean just when she’s old). I felt much more sympathy for Marvin and Doris than I did the first time reading it. I mean, imagine being in your sixties and having to deal not only with your own issues, but having to take care of a woman who seems unable to make anything easy for anyone. My own mother is 68 and suffering from Graves disease which is giving her double vision, photo-sensitivity, and constant tearing. I can only imagine what a burden it would be for her to have an even older, sicker, and more difficult parent to take care of.

Anyway, I’m wondering if Laurence was writing with a moral—since anyone can see that Hagar would’ve had a happier life if she’d married someone her father (coincidently or not) approved of—i.e. pride was her undoing. Or are we supposed to admire her independence and willingness to speak the truth as she sees it? Or are we just supposed to be neutral, afforded a glimpse into the mind of someone who finds some strange comfort in being miserable and keeping others distant?

A supremely well-crafted book.

From the back cover:
“If on a winter’s night a traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambiance, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another. They are the true heroes of the novel, for what would writing be without readers?”

My thoughts:
In this metafictional masterpiece, Italo Calvino draws the reader (that’s you) into a bizarre novel that folds in on itself, lying on the page but beyond it. It is a communication between the author and the reader—mediated by the publisher, by the translator, by academics, by government censors, by political movements, by the other reader, and finally by the author and the reader themselves. It is the ultimate exercise in literary self-reflection.

I marvelled continually at Calvino’s genius and there were several passages I loved (including the famous opening chapter in which he anatomises the process of choosing one book to read among the thousands contained in a bookstore). I also had a feeling of discomfort (I don’t know any other way to label it), that is familiar from other Cold War period novels (I’m not sure that the cause has anything to do with the Cold War itself, it’s just a convenient shorthand for the post-WWII to the mid-eighties), like Next Episode and Pale Fire (and even The Fire-Dwellers and St. Urbain’s Horseman). Perhaps I’ll figure out exactly what that is at some point.

Though there is some humour here (mostly of the absurdist variety), this is no light-hearted puzzle. It’s a puzzle that requires considerable concentration and focus to absorb, and time to contemplate it afterward.

Book 18, The Fire-Dwellers (1969) – Margaret Laurence
From the back cover:
“Stacey MacAindra burns – to burst through the shadows of her existence to a richer life, to recover some of the passion she can only dimly remember from her past.

The Fire-Dwellers is an extraordinary novel about a woman who has four children, a hard-working but uncommunicative husband, a spinster sister, and an abiding conviction that life has more to offer her than the tedious routine of her days.

Margaret Laurence has given us another unforgettable heroine – human, compelling, full of poetry, irony and humour. In the telling of her life, Stacey rediscovers for us all the richness of the commonplace, the pain and beauty in being alive, and the secret music that dances in everyone’s soul.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Margaret Laurence
the Wikipedia article on Neepawa, Ontario (model for Manawaka)

My thoughts:
I remember feeling rather annoyed with Stacey at the beginning—reading about someone else’s depression and desperation is not exactly fun. But by the time I got to the Superware party I had changed my attitude. I got to really like the rebellious spirit that Stacey was still holding on to. I ended up reading from the Richalife party straight through to the end.

This book is as topical today as in 1969, despite the advances of feminism. This would make a good book for a book club to read.

Book 16, The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963) – Margaret Laurence
From the back cover:
“The ten stories gathered together in The Tomorrow-Tamer are Margaret Laurence’s first published fiction. Set in raucous and often terrifying Ghana, where shiny Jaguars and modern jazz jostle for eminence against fetish figures, tribal rites, and the unchanging beat of jungle drums, the stories tell of individuals, European and African, trying to come to terms with the frightening world brought about by the country’s new freedom.

With the same compassion and understanding she would bring to her later fiction set in Canada, Laurence succeeds brilliantly in capturing the atmosphere of a continent and of individual men and women struggling for survival under the impact of the wind of change.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Margaret Laurence
the Wikipedia article on Ghana

My thoughts:
I really enjoyed these stories of West Africa at the twilight of European colonialism. They are filled with ambivalence as old beliefs and traditions die away as the modern world invades/is embraced. It’s a very difficult situation (and we see it everywhere, not just in the colonies of Europe). With modern science and the global monoculture, we are all in a continual process of loss, as languages, stories, beliefs, habitat, tribal (or rural) lifestyle are replaced with what’s new, modern, clean, intelligible, monolithic, American (often). This is a theme that Alistair MacLeod explored in his books, though his focus was on the Gaelic culture of Cape Breton.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Margaret Laurence (coming soon to my CanLit Challenge).