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    The Stone Angel
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    The Stone Angel
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    The Stone Angel
    Ebook330 pages5 hours

    The Stone Angel

    By Margaret Laurence and Michael Schmidt

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet...

    Hagar Shipley – an irascible, independent nonagenarian – has lived a quiet life full of rage. As she approaches her death, she retreats from the squabbling of her son and his wife to reflect on her past – her ill-advised marriage, her two sons, the harshness of farm life on the prairie, her own failures and the betrayals and failures of others.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHead of Zeus
    Release dateSep 8, 2016
    ISBN9781784977689
    Unavailable
    The Stone Angel
    Author

    Margaret Laurence

    Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) grew up in the small prairie town of Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada. Recognised as one of the greatest Canadian writers, her masterwork is the Manawaka sequence of five novels.

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    Reviews for The Stone Angel

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      First line:~ Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand ~I read this book after my 25 year old son shared with me his reactions to it. I figured anything that touched him in that way was worth reading. He did not lead me astray. I am a nurse and for many years worked with seniors and their families and am quite familiar with the emotional stress of caregiving and the issues around end of life decisions for medical care and placement in a care facility. And, 5 years ago, my mother died at age 83 after several years of deteriorating health. Reading the life and death of Hagar Shipley brought back many memories. My mother was considerably more likeable than Hagar but they both had a practicality, a stubbornness, a determination that enabled them to live a hard life and survive many difficulties. I was engaged with Hagar right from the beginning and found the writing to be realistic and beautiful. This woman reflects on her life from childhood, marriage, raising children, the death of one son, her challenging relationship with her remaining son and daughter-in-law and her basically unhappy life. I am impressed with Margaret Laurence's capacity to write realistic dialogue and to get inside the head of a much older woman. When Hagar takes herself away from the home she shares with her son and daughter-in-law and 'runs away' I want her to succeed, oh my, I want her to succeed but I could see that the story was moving to its inevitable conclusion. Even so, I was surprised. A wonderful read. I look forward to reading more of Margaret Laurence's works.
    • 5/5
      Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet, in memory of her who relinquished her feeble ghost as I gained my stubborn one, my mother's angel that my father bought in pride to mark her bones and proclaim his dynasty, as he fancied, forever and a day. (p. 1)Hagar Shipley has been through a lot, as you'd expect from anyone who has lived 90 years. Born in a small Manitoba town, she grew up the daughter of a shopkeeper. Her mother died in childbirth, and one of her two brothers also died young. Hagar grew up a strong, independent woman. She did not distinguish herself in any way that was unusual for her time, but her fierce independence and ability to stand up for her rights set her apart from most early 20th-century women. Now nearing the end of her life, Hagar lives with her son Marvin and daughter-in-law Doris, and is rapidly losing the independence she values so highly.Hagar has lived with Marvin and Doris for several years, but recently her needs have become more acute. She needs professional care, but actively resists any proposed change in living arrangements. She spends a lot of time inside her head, reflecting on life's highs and lows: the man she married, the sons she raised, the son she lost, and the townspeople who came and went over the years. A portrait emerges that provides tremendous insight to Hagar's character. The flashbacks are interspersed with present-day events: a visit from the minister, arguments with Marvin and Doris, and various evidence of Hagar's decline, which she often fails to recognize or acknowledge. Eventually Marvin and Doris convince Hagar to go on an outing, and they visit a care facility. It appears Hagar might actually accept the possibility of living there, and then a startling event dramatically alters the course of the story, and Hagar's life.I found this novel very realistic and moving. Despite Hagar's intense stubbornness and insensitivity, I liked her very much, and I felt very sorry for her as she lost the ability to do things on her own. Marvin and Doris' characters were less well developed, and they sometimes seemed a bit callous, but I also sympathized with them as they took on responsibility they probably never anticipated. The last chapters were difficult to read, because you knew where the story had to lead, and I was sorry to say good-bye to such a memorable character as Hagar Shipley.
    • 3/5
      3.5*

      The question I have is: Would I have read and enjoyed The Stone Angel if it had not been considered a Canadian classic and if a RL friend of mine did not highly recommend it?

      Well, I have read it, and I can see why it is considered a classic. There is so much symbolism in this book, you can draw classroom material for years from it. And of course, it is always nice to read a story with a strong female lead - and you hardly get any stronger female leads than Hagar. Tho, of course, one could argue that "strong" and "obnoxious" are not the same, and that Hagar's pride and stubbornness are more of a weakness than a strength.

      But was the book enjoyable?

      I can't say I loved it. For all it's metaphorical word play and stoicism and irony - Hagar was pretty unlikeable, the characters around her were not that likable either, but I did admire the sass and gumption that the characters brought up in dealing with each other.

      I'll probably give Laurence's other books in this cycle a miss, tho.
    • 5/5
      90 year old Hagar is an unhappy woman. Misanthropic and judgemental she is a friend to no one, not even herself. She was a bad daughter, wife and mother. You know the expression "She wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire?" Well, Hagar would -- just. As Margaret Laurence says in Adele Wiseman's afterward, she was full of pride for no reason. As Hagar herself says, Pride was my wilderness and the demon that lead me there was fear. She's a very interesting character who is of little use to anyone else in the world but she is a hard worker and does at last a revealing job of puzzling out her life.
    • 5/5
      This book is the first of the Manawaka cycle of books by Laurence. Probably most Canadians and maybe most other readers of Laurence's books know that Manawaka is based on Laurence's birthplace of Neepawa in Manitoba. Neepawa is a town I have driven through often and I have even visited the Margaret Laurence Home that is now a museum. I am ashamed to say that I have never visited the actual stone angel in the cemetary but I intend to rectify that soon.This book is about Hagar Shipley. Hagar was born into a well-off family in Manawaka and had many privileges growing up. After coming home from finishing school she helped her father in his store until she decided to marry a lackadaisical farmer, Bram Shipley. Bram was considerably older than her but still a fine looking man. Hagar had two sons by him, Marvin and John. Hagar and Bram never had much money and Hagar was reduced to selling eggs in town to former schoolmates. A proud woman Hagar eventually left Bram and took John with her. They lived in Vancouver where Hagar kept house for an elderly but rich man.This book takes place when Hagar is 90 with her reminiscing about her life and how her pride led her into difficulties. The epigraph at the front of the book "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." by Dylan Thomas could have been written especially for Hagar.I realized as I read this book that the story has Biblical underpinnings in the story of Hagar who bore Abraham's first child, Ishmael, and was then cast out. I'm pretty sure I didn't think about that when I first read it.
    • 4/5
      Imagining the world of the elderly and giving voice to a 90 year old character Hagar Shipley and turning it into a compelling read takes some doing. Margaret Laurence managed to pull it off in her late 30's. This was my first go around with her fiction but probably not my last. Narrated entirely by Hagar from the first page to the last she takes us from the early days of her childhood in a small rural town on the Canadian plains through a more disastrous than not marriage--to the death of her favorite son in a reckless automobile accident to the present day hospital where she lays dying. She is not altogether a sympathetic character and I don't believe that Ms. Laurence had any intention of making her into one. She struggles even early on against those who would impose their will on her--particularly her mercantile minded father but has no problem trying to coerce and control her husband or her two sons. At times as when she ruins the marraige plans of her youngest son John she is very mean spirited even. In the present time snatches of the novel her other son Marvin and his wife Doris yearn their own freedom from her and want to put her into a nursing home--something the fiercely independent minded Hagar resists with all her strength. Laurence's look particularly at the toll aging takes on her heroine is quite remarkable. She plums the depths of her characters' psycology with much perception and even at times humor. Her writing is fluid--although sometimes at least for me the story dragged a little. So there is not much in terms of action and thrills--it however more than makes up for all that with an acute sense of reality to our common humanity and also with much grace. It is very much worth reading and pondering on afterwards.
    • 5/5
      I was first introduced to this book in high school where it was part of the curriculum. I didn't particularily care for it much at the time. I read it again in an English Lit. class in university and saw some of its finer point. I have since read it a third time and have realized what a wonderful book it is. Maybe it has to be read when the reader has had a bit more life experience. I think a certain amount of maturity is needed to really appreciate the imagery and nuances in this book. Not that I am discrediting the abilities of high-school students - I am speaking from my own experience. This is one of the best novels from a Canadian author ever written...maybe even number one!!!
    • 5/5
      I read this book when I was in my early twenties and I just didn't get it. Now I do. An excellent book.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this book. It gave me insight into what it might be like to be in the latter stages of aging. However, it's more than just a story of dying, it's also about families throughout the whole of their cycle, and about class and race issues in a small town.
    • 5/5
      The Stone Angel is very nearly a perfect thing of its kind. Hagar Shipley narrates the story of her life as she faces old age and death. Told in a first-person, present tense narrative, her story reveals her character and the characters of the persons important in her life. Other reviewers have remarked that Hagar is not a likable character; she's not. She has been and remains a self-willed woman unable to get a realistic perspective on the world because of her focus on herself. I think that she is more like me than I care to believe. I can despise an egoist's cruelty, but Hagar somehow engaged my sympathy as well. I have certainly felt fury at the indifference of the universe to my unique person, and Hagar has spent her life refusing to accept that indifference. In hospital, dying of cancer, she finally is able to show and receive a little kindness which does not finally impinge on her indomitable nature.The other characters are drawn equally clearly but more sympathetically - a real feat since they are seen only through Hagar's eyes. This is a quiet book, beautifully written, and I'm grateful to have discovered Margaret Laurence.
    • 4/5
      It's rather wonderful to come across someone like Margaret Laurence and realise just how many more great writers there must be out there that I've still never heard of. This book managed to stay under my radar for fifty years, so maybe she's not all that well known on this side of the Atlantic, but she obviously deserves to be! It is a bit of a stealth novel, anyway. Laurence has a very fine, precise, understated style that doesn't give you many clues about where she's heading, and the book pretends to be a straightforward rural family saga, as narrated by a tough old matriarch who grew up in a small Canadian prairie community in the late nineteenth century, but there are all sorts of other things going on, and the historical setting is really little more than very high-quality scene-dressing. In particular, it's a scarily convincing look at what it must be like to be in your nineties and no longer quite able to rely on your mind or your body to do what you would like. And - rather like The sea, the sea - the unsatisfactory life-story of an increasingly unlikeable central character turns out to be hiding a sophisticated argument about redemption that only starts to make sense when you get to the end of the book. Admittedly, there might be a touch of the Lord Marchmains about the ending itself if you took it out of context, but it's not crass enough to spoil the mood. Definitely a book you should read, but it won't make you any more comfortable about the prospect of old age...
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite books. What an outstanding writer Laurence was, my top-ranked Canadian writer. From the first words to the last, this book is magnificent. It overwhelms me every time I read it.
    • 5/5
      Laurence's acclaimed novel has some resemblances to Cather's My Mortal Enemy -- both protagonists have moved from prairie towns to cities, both defied their guardians to marry unsuitable matches and were disinherited, and both face the end of their lives with a certain amount of bitterness. But there the resemblances pretty much end. Where Cather's novella seemed truncated to me, The Stone Angel is ample and full of detailed description of indoor and outdoor spaces, both physical and psychological. Hagar Shipley, the 90-year old protagonist/narrator of the novel, has shared her house with her 60-something son and daughter-in-law for 17 years, but caring for the increasingly needy old woman has become difficult and burdensome for them, and she resents their attitudes.Now I am rampant with memory. I don't often indulge in this, or not so very often, anyway. Some people will tell you that the old live in the past -- that's nonsense. Each day, so worthlesss really, has a rarity for me lately.... But one dissembles, usually for the sake of such people as Marvin, who is somehow comforted by the picture of old ladies feeding like docile rabbits on the lettuce leaves of other times, other manners. How unfair I am. Well, why not? To carp like this -- it's my only enjoyment, that and the cigarettes, a habit I acquired only ten years ago, out of boredom. Hagar, who has lived a hard life of toil and carved out a space of self-sufficiency for herself, is proud and stiff, quick to speak her mind and slow to forgive. The novel is full of her memories of the people and places in her life as she tries to cope with her increasing debilitating and humiliating physical condition. This is a humbling novel for anyone who thinks they want to live on into old age.
    • 5/5
      Margaret Laurence's THE STONE ANGEL came highly recommended. Elizabeth Hay, herself an accomplished and critically acclaimed Canadian author (see her ALONE IN THE CLASSROOM and LATE NIGHTS ON AIR), told me that in her late teens and early twenties Laurence had "made a huge, huge impression" on her and that she had gone on to read all of her books and that THE STONE ANGEL "is considered her best."Well, I can't comment on that last qualification because this is only the second Laurence book I've read. The other, A JEST OF GOD, was a masterful little book, but I must say that this one is even better, with its first person narrative providing a most disturbing inside peek at what it might be like to be ninety years old and largely unloved and unwanted - and perhaps deservedly so, in the case of the ubercritical and crotchety widow, Hagar Shipley.With Hagar, Laurence has created a character who will linger in your consciousness for a long time. Willful and headstrong daughter of a widowed self-made Manawaka storekeeper, Hagar, product of two years of finishing school, marries 'beneath her station' to a crude farmer, an action which estranges her from her father. She bears two sons, ignoring the hardworking and faithful aspects of the first and doting on the second. There is strife and tragedy in Hagar's life in Manawaka (also the setting for A JEST OF GOD) and brief intimations of a real affection that might have developed in her awkward marriage to Bram Shipley. But she squelches that, as she does so many other chances for happiness, and finally chooses to leave him and travel with her younger, more favored, son, John, out to the coast where she works as a domestic for a wealthy man. Things come slowly apart between Hagar and John, who moves back to live with his father. Hagar herself travels back to Manawaka when she learns Bram is dying. One doesn't often think of Canada and the Dust Bowl era together, but devastating scenes of drought and ruin run through this part of the book in descriptions of the landscape, with its prairie farms and line fences buried in wind-rippled deserts of dust.Laurence gives us Hagar's life in the woman's own words, looking back from the age of ninety, as she battles against the efforts of her son Marvin and his wife Doris to settle her in a nursing home. Rapidly slipping, both physically and mentally, Hagar dwells on her past mistakes, and even though she recognizes the unfairness of her acid-tongued criticism of stolid faithful Marvin, she seems helpless to stop, unable to change the habits of a lifetime. Barely able to walk - or think straight - she manages to "run away," by bus, hitch-hiking and, finally, walking. An interlude in an abandoned fish cannery, sharing smokes and a jug of cheap wine with a stranger, brought to mind elements of William Kennedy's classic novel of the Great Depression, IRONWEED. But perhaps the best comparison, from contemporary fiction, would be to Elizabeth Strout's recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, OLIVE KITTERIDGE. For Olive and Hagar share the same qualities of unpleasantness and pathos. Neither character is likeable, but both have much to teach us, particularly when it comes to missed chances and the sadness of growing old all alone.Cold, confused, hungry and alone, Hagar ponders death -"Hard to imagine a world and I not in it. Will everything stop when I do? Stupid old baggage, who do you think you are? Hagar. There's no one like me in this world."Indeed, Hagar. Indeed. And that is precisely the magic of THE STONE ANGEL. Laurence has created a one-of-a-kind character.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, published in 1964. It's the story of Hagar Shipley, a 90 year-old Canadian woman living in a small town in Manitoba, who survived the Great Depression. She looks back over her life and reflects upon the decisions she has made and why she made them. She was a tough lady to like, she was often mean spirited, judgmental and prideful. She was impulsive in her youth and married a man who her father did not like, consequently she was disowned. She suffered a lot of hardships because of that, but always stood her ground. In the end she is living in her house being cared for by her son and daughter-in-law. She appears to have some alzheimers and again makes some bad decisions that get her thinking about her life. The book is written with sympathy and humor. I liked the repeated image of the stone angel. The book is well-written and memorable albeit sad.
    • 1/5
      I hated this book.
      It still makes me angry even now.
      I wanted to burn it when I was in high school.
      Bleh.

      I don't dislike many books, but this is top of the list.

      Whiny old bitch.
    • 5/5
      Ninety year old Hagar Shipley, intensely full of pride, is reflecting over her long life while clashing with her son and daughter in law, who are attempting to admit her into a nursing home. For anyone who has had to struggle with this issue, or for anyone approaching the time when this will become an issue, Margaret Laurence’s book is an eye-opening picture of old age. Narrated by Hagar herself, the author is pitch perfect as she describes Hagar’s life and her difficulty accepting the next phase.“I am barely aware of the words that issue from my mouth. I am overcome with fear, the feeling one has when the ether mask goes on, when the mind cries out to the limbs, ‘flail against the thing,’ but the limbs are already touched with lethargy, bound and lost. Can they force me? If I fuss and fume, will they simply ask a brawny nurse to restrain me? Strap me into harness, will they? Make a madwoman of me? I fear this place exceedingly. I cannot even look. I don’t dare. Has it walls and windows, doors and closets, like a dwelling? Is it a mausoleum, and I, the Egyptian, mummified with pillows and my own flesh, through some oversight embalmed alive? There must be some mistake.” (Page 96)The most interesting point of the book is the fact that the main character, Hagar, is so totally unlikable. Her life has been joyless and there are few people that she has helped or even cared about and it is now, at this point in her life, that she is beginning to realize it. Generally, when the character is unlikable, so is the book but that is not the case this time. Laurence’s writing is stunningly beautiful and the narrative flows exquisitely. We follow Hagar as she follows through on her escape plan and we go back in time recalling when she was a child, when she first marries Bram Shipley (“In ten years he had changed, put away the laughter he once wore and replaced it with a shabbier garment.” Page 113) as Hagar dwells on her memories, which are all she has left.That it took me this long to discover Margaret Laurence is fairly unbelievable. An accomplished writer who has been awarded Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award she wrote her last book in 1989. I will be looking for some of her other books for here is a phenomenal writer whose prose is worth seeking out. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book (and love Hagar) and continue to re-read it over the years. Always enjoy it, every time!
    • 5/5
      This Canadian classic drew me right in. Hagar Shipley is a 90-something year old woman nearing the end of her life. She lives with her son, Marvin, and his wife Doris. As they age themselves and have a more difficult time caring for her, they begin to try to convince her to move to a nursing home. Hagar is adamantly opposed and takes drastic steps to avoid moving. The book is told from Hagar's point of view and she reminisces about her life as a child, wife, and mother in rural Manawaka while also revealing how aging is affecting her, both physically and mentally. Reminisces isn't really the right word though. Her age and mental state means that often she almost relives some of these times. Hagar is pointed and direct, funny and unfiltered. I really liked her, even while seeing how difficult she would be to live with and care for. The novel is written with skill, beauty, and insight. I loved it.
    • 3/5
      "Pride is my wilderness and fear is the demon that took me there." That line hooked me.

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