The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
This book was recommended at IB training I went to Summer 2007. The instructor teaches it to his 12th grade English class.
It was one of the rare books I've read where I did not care for the protagonist, despite the fact that the story is told in first person point of view. Hagar, who is 90 years old and suffers from slight dementia, tells the story of her life through flashbacks. The reader can see how unfair she is as she relates various episodes in her life, yet can somehow still feel for her since it is she that is telling the story and we can understand how her dementia works. I felt a lot of sympathy for Doris and poor Marvin. As a matter of fact, even though we only meet Marvin through Hagar's eyes, I felt very sorry for a man who seemed to have been torn emotionally by his mother his entire life. She does not tell her lifestory in a true chronological order, so the reader is challenged with fitting the pieces together. It's not as confusing as Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, but the reader does need to pay attention and keep up characters and time references.
I had to ponder the meaning of the title, depite that it appears in the first line of the book. The significance of the stone angel does not become apparent until you finish the book. Then, it takes on several different meanings.
It was one of the rare books I've read where I did not care for the protagonist, despite the fact that the story is told in first person point of view. Hagar, who is 90 years old and suffers from slight dementia, tells the story of her life through flashbacks. The reader can see how unfair she is as she relates various episodes in her life, yet can somehow still feel for her since it is she that is telling the story and we can understand how her dementia works. I felt a lot of sympathy for Doris and poor Marvin. As a matter of fact, even though we only meet Marvin through Hagar's eyes, I felt very sorry for a man who seemed to have been torn emotionally by his mother his entire life. She does not tell her lifestory in a true chronological order, so the reader is challenged with fitting the pieces together. It's not as confusing as Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, but the reader does need to pay attention and keep up characters and time references.
I had to ponder the meaning of the title, depite that it appears in the first line of the book. The significance of the stone angel does not become apparent until you finish the book. Then, it takes on several different meanings.
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