Hagar’s father is furious, incapable of forgiving, he never sees Hagar again, never meeting her sons Marvin and John. Hagar marries a man her father least wants her too – Bram Shipley is older, a widower with grown up daughters. The surrounding community – like communities everywhere I suppose had its snobberies and pretensions, one of Hagar’s school fellows despised because of the sins of her mother. There are two brothers, and Aunt Doll – the widow hired to help look after Jason’s motherless children. The apple they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree – and her father Jason Currie was a difficult man, an unforgiving, harsh disciplinarian. I don’t and never shall, not even if I’m damned for it.”īorn in the small rural community of Manawaka, during another century, Hagar was the daughter of a successful Scottish store-owner. But I can’t say I like it, or accept it, or believe it’s for the best. “I can’t change what’s happened to me in my life, or make what’s not occurred take place. She is sharp tongued, a difficult woman, devoid of warmth – she doesn’t give her son or daughter-in-law any credit. Hargar’s voice is wonderfully strong, she has lived a long life, there is a sense that her life has not been happy. Living with her son Marvin and his wife Doris, Hagar is sick, irascible and worried she is about to be shipped off to a care home. “Privacy is a privilege not granted to the aged or the young.” As the novel opens we get a snapshot of Hagar’s childhood, as aged ninety Hagar begins to reflect on her past. In this beautifully written novel, Margaret Laurence explores the life of one woman, Hagar Shipley, moving back and forth through different periods of her life.

I also have A Jest of God the second Manawaka novel sitting on my tbr – and I am now really looking forward to it. The Stone Angel is the first books in Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka novels – though my understanding is that place is the only real link, and that each novel stands alone. The librarything Virago group have chosen to read Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence during June, giving me the excuse I needed to try a writer of whom I had heard rather good things.

Summary of the stone angel