Book Report

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I am reading The Stone Angel by Margaret LAURENCE with a “U” not a “W” grrrr! I have consistently spelled that wrong my whole life, even with the book right in front of me.

I know, she’s dead, what does she care. I CARE. Her angel probably cares too.

I am a big Margaret Laurence fan. Unlike a lot of my peers, I was not forced to read her books in high school or university, but allowed to come to them of my own will. I think being allowed to read what you want, when you want, is a great way to encourage reading in high school. I know a lot of people who have that “uggggh – classics are boring and stupid” reaction to Margarets Laurence or Atwood or to The Classics specifically because they were forced to read The Diviners or The Edible Woman or The Goddamn Shakespeare in high school and because that was the 5 years of their lives when they were rebelling against everything, they included The Goddamn Shakespeare in the general rebellion and there is no way of shaking that “uggggh” reaction now, 20 years later.

Except that I really do think Shakespeare is over-rated and would rather have spent that half a year? Two years? reading something else. Anything else. There are lots of plays out there, people. Let’s think outside the box. Let’s move forward. Let’s find a solution.

I acquired six Margaret Laurence books quite a few years ago. A friend of my mom’s was cleaning out her bookshelves and gave her The Stone Angel, The Diviners, The Fire-Dwellers, This Side Jordan, Heart of a Stranger (essays) and The Tomorrow-Tamer (short stories). I read one and then read them all and have read them all every couple of years since. My favourite has always been The Fire-Dwellers, an internal-dialogue-heavy story about a young wife and mother of four who is a little ballsier than her husband, kids and acquaintances can accept. The character of Stacey is so funny and loveable and stuck and human – I am always immediately wrapped in this book because its dialogue is as plain as my own conversations with myself while being just a smidge more poetical than real life.

I like The Diviners too.

But right now I am reading The Stone Angel, which is narrated by Hagar, an old, creaky, cranky woman who lives with her son and his wife. It is a classic Dysfunctional Family Novel (I swear this is a genre, with several regional sub-genres, this one being Canadian) in that it makes you love the main character and then you learn about her horrible life with its pain piled upon pain piled upon pain and then you find out that the worst pain of all is the pain she brought upon herself by being a horrible person but she couldn’t help it because of all the pain she’d endured and then you find yourself crying on the bus because her dying son says, “Can you get me something for the pain, Mother? Oh no, of course you can’t,” with his trademark bitter tone and it just breaks your heart, it does.

Why you gotta be like that, Hagar?

I’ve heard that when one becomes a parent, one becomes sensitized to things like violence against children on TV shows or bad-news stories about children. I haven’t noticed that sensitization. It’s sad when people die, to quote a guy I once knew. However, reading about how Hagar plays a part in destroying her son’s life, especially as she is telling the story having run away from her older son and his wife, hiding in a cold beach shack and getting drunk with a stranger (with his own dead son) in her torn, polyester old-lady dress, THAT makes me go, “Ouch. Parenthood is a risky, terrible endeavor.”

Is this an indication of my inherent selfishness, in that I don’t care enough about my own son to fear for his safety rather than my own depressing future? Or does it, instead, indicate a maturity beyond my years; that I recognize the threat I have some ability to modify (my own behavior) as opposed to fearing what I can do nothing about (bus crashes).

Yes.

And then there are the aspects of Hagar’s personality that remind me of a grandmother I know; a woman whose physical limitations are incredibly frustrating to her and whose history as The Hard Ass is so entrenched that you suspect even when she wants to give in and be soft cuddly Gramma, something makes her straighten up and stiffen that upper lip. For fear a family might fall apart, for fear of losing face, for fear.

I was reading coming home yesterday and the bus filled up with old people; it was the old people run, I guess and they were all over the place, standing, sitting, carrying 18 bags of groceries each. Thinking their thoughts. Remembering their days of coming home, reading novels on the bus, going to pick up their kids at the babysitter’s after a long day at a desk or in a plant or behind a counter. I don’t have the time to take all the old people on the bus out for coffee and listen to their stories, but I sure would like to.

Once, I would have read The Stone Angel and cried because I was young and Hagar had so obviously wasted her life. Now, I read it and cry because I’m a parent and there are no right answers or guarantees. Someday I will read it and cry because I’m 85 and my life was just as long and varied as hers; full of big mistakes and small joys and despair and magic.

I hope.