I have a complicated relationship with Margaret Laurence’s classic novel, The Stone Angel. My first go-round with the novel came when my mom bought a beat-up copy from a garage sale at the senior’s home where my grandma lived. It would have been the late 1980s and it cost her a dime.
When I accepted it, I must have had a confused look on my face because she reminded me that I really like this author. I hadn’t actually read anything by her at that point and quickly discovered mom was thinking of Margret Atwood, who I was reading voraciously at that time. “Still,” she said, “she’s Canadian. You should read her.” Not sure if Mom read her, but I accepted the book with thanks.
We had likely been packing or unpacking something from the trunk of my car because that’s where I found the book a few years later, shoved deep inside the innards where broken snow brushes and crumpled grocery receipts become fossilized. Both Mom and Grandma had passed by then and I lifted the old book gently. I’ll give it a go, I figured, and carried it into the house. That’s when I tried reading it the first time, but I’m embarrassed now to say it ended up in another garage sale before I had gotten very far.
Many years went by and it was a new century. Heck, it was a new millennium, and CBC launched it’s inaugural Canada Reads program in 2002. That year’s slogan was ‘One book that all of Canada should read together’ and, you guessed it, The Stone Angel was one of the shortlisted five. Actually, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was also on the list that year, but I had read that long ago. Okay, I felt the pressure once again and picked up another copy of The Stone Angel. Fortunately I found it at another garage sale and, even though it cost way more than a dime by then, I didn’t feel too guilty when I donated to a used bookstore several months later. Still unread, even though I had slogged somewhat further into it.
In the nearly 25 years since that last attempt, I’ve sort of anguished about my inability to become affected by the story. I’ve analyzed what my life was like at the times the book had come to me in the past, as though it was somehow me and my chaos that was to blame. I’ve read other Margaret Laurence books since then, but this one has been called a Canadian Classic. I’ve seen one influential author refer to Hagar Shipley as the most recognizable of all Canadian characters. So off to the local used bookstore I went.
This time, I totally understood. I devoured the thing in two days. I related deeply to Hagar’s awareness of her own aging, as she uttered out loud thoughts that were supposed to remain silent. As she watched with detached wonder at her own hostility towards people, and as she persevered through her long life’s trials and huffed her 90 year old body through the challenges she set for herself. How could this author envelop so completely the thoughts and physical challenges that an aging person faces, when she was in her 30s when she wrote the book?
It is, indeed, a book that all of Canada should read together. Let’s grow old together, Canada, and celebrate the great things we can do. Every book has its time, I guess. Thanks, Mom for spending that dime to get this one to me.