![]() I think I will probably be a cantankerous old woman too.Īs Schmidt points out in his Introduction, Hagar is actually two characters: the protagonist and the narrator. I am currently reading Brigid Delaney’s Reasons Not to Worry, How to be Stoic in chaotic times … and I wonder how stoic I will be when the time comes. 90 year-old Hagar Currie Shipley is considerably older than me, but she faces the loss of her independence with anger about its indignities and her refusal to be ‘put into’ aged care is part of a future that too often crosses the mind. (p.vii)įor readers my age, it is only too easy to identify with a woman struggling with ageing. Those seeking characters with whom they can identify, a sympathetic narrator, conventional uplift or tragedy, are going to be puzzled and disappointed by a book so apparently conventional, yet so determinedly offbeat. divides readers in ways that serious literature, no matter how amusing and wry the writing, often does. My 2016 edition includes an Introduction by Michael Schmidt which tells me that this classic of Canadian literature. This Side Jordan (1960) was her debut novel, and The Stone Angel is the first in the semi-autobiographical Manakawa Sequence. Thanks to the miracle of Google Meet, we chat each week about books and so I didn’t need to wait for Joe’s review to order The Stone Angel, the book for which Laurence is best known. ![]() ![]() I owe my discovery of the Canadian author Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) to Joe from Rough Ghosts. ![]()
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