Backlisted - Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

For this first episode of 2024 we are joined by the chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings to discuss a novel by her fellow Canadian, Margaret Laurence. First published in 1964, The Stone Angel is a landmark in modern Canadian fiction. The narrator is the unforgettable Hagar Shipley, a spiky, sharp-tongued, proud and profane ninety-year-old who is trying to resist her family’s attempts to transfer her into a nursing home. This battle is interwoven with memories of her long and difficult life, much of it spent in the Manitoban prairie town of Manawaka, a place closely based on Laurence’s own home town of Neepawa and which would provide the setting for three more novels and a collection of stories. We discuss the book’s place in the Canadian pantheon and speculate on why it hasn’t become and established classic outside Canada (it is no longer in print with Virago). We also discover some unexpected coincidences among Margaret Laurence’s neighbours during the years she lived in England in the late sixties and early seventies. This is a book that deserves to find many more new readers. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. Everyone knows therapy is great for solving problems. But turns out, therapy has some issues of its own. Finding the right therapist, fitting into their schedule, and, of course, the cost. BetterHelp can help solve these problems. It's online, convenient, built around your schedule, and surprisingly affordable, too. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more.

That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show, we can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a podcast which gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in a prairie town in the Canadian province of Manitoba in the late 1890s.

We're on the edge of the town dump, a place of sulfurous fumes, discarded food and shattered furniture. It's a hot day in July, and a group of teenage girls are tiptoeing around the edge of the pit. They stop and stare at the ground, where out of a pile of smashed, discarded eggs, a few pale, feeble chicks have started to emerge. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, where people crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And for this first episode of 2024, Happy New Year, one and all, making her backlisted debut,

we welcome the publisher, Lenny Goodings. Hello. Thank you for having me. Hi, Lenny. Hi. Lenny is here not merely in a literary capacity, but to correct us on anything that we may get wrong to do with Canada which we're going to do our level best to get that right we're very sensitive Canadian sensitivity reader well we grew up with a big with a big fella below us yeah it's very

similar to you know I grew up in New Zealand it's very similar to the relationship I think with New Zealand Australia yeah that's same thing yeah Lenny is chair of Virago Press. Her authors include Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, Sarah Waters, Natasha Walter, former backlisted guest Linda Grant, Joan Bakewell, Sandy Toksvig, Harriet Walter, and Marilynne Robinson. She grew up in Canada and has been in London and with Virago since the late 1970s. Working with authors and books is her passion. She won the Booksellers Award for Editor and Imprint of the Year in 2010 and a Lifetime's Achievement Award at London's

Women of the World Festival in 2018. Her book A Bite of the Apple, A Life with Books, Writers and Virago, was published in 2020 by OUP, of which The Guardian wrote, as a reminder of female artists' ongoing fight for space and respect, it's necessary, as a riff on writers and writing, it's essential. She is also riff on writers and writing. It's essential. She is also chair of the charity Poet in the City. Lenny, because we're going to be talking about books by women and a book by a woman, why don't you tell us first about Poet in the City? What is that charity? What does it do? It uses poetry as a means of sort of social impact is how we talk about it. You know, we commission new poets. We put poetry on in unusual places. So it's linking communities, stories, unheard voices through the art of poetry. I mean, I feel like I've spent my entire life trying to give space to unheard voices.

So it's very linked to Virago in that way too. It was very nice of you to let us know that Julia Bird, who is, what is she, a poet in the city? She's our executive director of Poet in the City. She's a backlisted listener, so she might be here. She is, big time. Hello, Julia. Thank you so much. Hi, City. She's a backlisted listener, so she might be here. She is. Big time. Hello, Julia. Thank you so much. Hi, Julia.

She'll be delighted. John, over to you. The novel we're here to discuss today is The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence, first published in Canada by MacLennan and Stewart in 1964, and a book which has been described as a reshaping of Canada's psychic landscape, and which became a set text in high schools for several generations of Canadian students. It's the first of four novels and one collection of stories that Lawrence set in the prairie town of Manawaka, a place she called a town of the mind, but which is clearly also based on her own childhood home of Nipawa in the Manitoban prairies. This landmark in Canadian literature introduces the first-person narrative of Hagar Shipley,

a difficult, sharp-tongued, proud, and utterly compelling 90-year-old who is trying to resist her family's attempts to transfer her into a nursing home. This is interwoven with memories of her long life and the regrets and tragedies that have defined it, particularly those connected to her lost men, her brutus husband Bram Shipley and her lost son John. One critic has described it as a portrait of an unlovely life built on uncompromising convictions. It was published in the UK by Macmillan in 1964, but then released a reissued as a Virago modern classic in 1987 with an introduction by Sarah Maitland, who suggested that the book deserved to be much better known in the UK. Well, you can get the e-book, but it's not

currently in print in the UK. So I think it still deserves to be. It is. It's not by us, sadly, not by Virago anymore. We couldn't keep it in print. We couldn't sell enough copies, but it's now published by Head of Zeus. Is it? Okay, that's good news. Okay, I'm pleased to hear that.

Good. Well, look, I had never read this novel before. I believe John Mitchinson had never read this novel before. Let's turn then first to you, Lenny, and tell us when did you first read either this novel or when did you become aware of Margaret Lawrence's writing? So when I went to university in the 70s, I signed up for a course called CANLIT, Canadian Literature. We called it CANLIT. And at that time, I will tell you more about Canadian Literature in due course, but at that time, the most they could muster was a half-year course. So I took the half-year course CANLIT, and I studied Margaret Atwood, of course, Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, later on Michael Ondaatje, not at that point.

And we also studied Margaret Lawrence. So this is 1975 when I was taking that course. And her book had been published, as you said, in the 60s. So The Stone Angel was a set text for many of us. It became a set text for high schools, et cetera, but wasn't a set text when I went to high school. But I did learn about it when I went to university. And I think it is one of my all-time favorite books, actually, as is her last novel called The Diviners,

which actually, I have to say, changed my life. How did it change your life, please? People will want to know. Actually, I've written a book about Virago, as you just said, and I talk about how it changed my life, how books changed my life, but this one particularly. I read The Diviners about two years after it came out, so it'd be 1976. And at point, I'd left university, and I was living in a bedsit in Victoria, which is in British Columbia, so as far away as you can, actually kind of as far away from home as I could get because I wanted to see.

I had this idea. I'm the oldest of five, and I grew up in a very small town, and then I went to university in a small town. So I had an idea that I wanted to see what it felt like to live where you knew nobody. I'm just going to tell you what it feels like. It's lonely. It's incredibly lonely. I hadn't quite realized that.

Anyway, so as a result, I did work in a bookshop and then I read a lot in the evenings because I didn't know anybody. And I read The Diviners. So it's funny because I've now reread The Diviners and I realize you take different things from a book at different ages that you are, don't you? So The Diviners for me was like the woman's room, Marilyn French's, the woman's room.

So it was absolutely eye-opening to me. And I think even though I think I would have called myself a feminist then, but I certainly would have felt feminist. I'd traveled alone. I'd got, you know, I would tend to have a career, et cetera. I still had a bit of an idea, I realized, that my life would be dictated by who I married. The man that I married would slightly dictate my life. I realized I still hadn't got rid of that, you know. And so in my life, I had two men at various, one was actually in Australia and one was somewhere else. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I was young.

Come on. I'm so glad we asked this question, though. Keep going. Keep going. This is a very long answer, isn't it? It's brilliant. Anyway, so in The Diviners, the young woman, Morag, Morag Gunn, I mean, fabulous name, eh?

She is slightly deciding what her life would be like, and she marries an Englishman. She's trying to be a novelist. She tells her she's not a very good writer. He was very controlling. She also has another man in her life who's a Metis, an indigenous person, who is more earthy, wilder. And so she has these sort of two boyfriends, as it were, at various times.

I had a version of that. And she finally says, I'm going to England. I don't have to be either of these people. I don't have to be the wife to the intellectual. I don't have to stay in Canada and do this other thing. I'm going to London. And I read that sitting in my little bed set in Victoria on the edge of Canada. And I thought, that's right. I'll make my own life and I'm going to London. So that's how she changed my life. Wow, she did change your life. Yes, she really did. I am slightly suspicious of that phrase,

the book changed my life, because often it doesn't really mean that. It just means, well, I really liked it. I agree with you. You know? I mean, I am saying it wholeheartedly because she definitely did. But I agree with you. I think it's a very hackneyed phrase.

And lots of people do mean just, you know, I felt moved. I saw the world differently whatever i literally thought i'm leaving so interesting i'm going i'm going to london amazing okay great and i'm leaving both those men too yeah i'm gonna start entirely again yes we're not talking about the diviners why are we talking about The Stone Angel today then? Well, you know what? It's a better book. It is. It's a better novel. I mean, The Diviners is, as you said, it's her last novel. She went on afterwards to write children's books. She wrote a lot of essays. She wrote a memoir just before she died. So she did do other writing, but that was her last novel. She put a lot of themes in it.

It's a little overloaded. It's got too many digressions, possibly too many characters, some people say. Whereas The Stone Angel is actually perfect. It is. You know, there's no such thing as a perfect novel, of course. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing out of place. I've now reread it a couple times for this program,

and I realize again, you know, once you stop reading it just for plot, you just see the art of it, actually. And the way, I'm sure we'll talk about this, the way that she's got two narratives going. So she's got the contemporary, you know, she's this old lady. She's 90 years old. She's living in her son's house, a long suffering daughter-in-law, frankly, too. She's lived there for 16 or 17 years. And

she is, as he calls later, a holy terror. She's absolutely awful, isn't she? So you've got, that's her outward look. But underneath is this other backstory backstory and you begin to understand how she became this person also you never lose sympathy I think it's a masterpiece actually in that way let me just ask before I ask you John about how you felt when you when you read the book just a memo to future guests on this podcast please note that Lenny reread this book twice before she came on here. Not just reread it. She did it twice. She does due diligence.

If you could see Lenny's sheaf of notes, we're very, very grateful to you for choosing the book and giving us so much commitment to getting over to people what it is that's so special about it. I think I must be feeling like I'm back in my can-lit, of course. I could definitely write a thesis now. John, you hadn't read this before. I hadn't.

You hadn't either, right? No, I hadn't. And I wasn't even really aware of Margaret Lawrence, which I feel incredibly ashamed of. Yeah, same. It's embarrassing. I'm always amazed when people say they haven't read any Janet Frame, say, as a New Zealand writer who was taught in schools and I didn't know exactly what to expect. But I

have enjoyed reading this book and thought about this book almost as much as we've ever done i i don't think i've ever read any presentation of old age in fiction as that's as powerful and as memorable and as funny and as terrifying and as at times utterly kind of awful as this i think you're right i think it kind of is almost perfect this book and it doesn't give up either i was terribly worried that there was going to be some horrible, you know, happy ending. I'm not giving any spoilers away. It's not an unhappy ending either, but it is an ending. It's a magnificent book. I am now intrigued to read more Margaret Lawrence. Like John, I feel suitably embarrassed and ashamed. I'd like to, in fact, issue an official backlisted apology to the people of Canada that we don't know this novel.

We really ought to have known this novel. What a fantastic book. Fantastic. I just want to read the blurb on the back of this Virago edition. Lenny, did you write this? I did not. But I won't be asking you to pass judgment on it now, because that seems mean to a former colleague, potentially. But John and I will see how we feel.

Let me read you the blurb from 87, and then you tell me if you would change this for the here and now. In this beautifully crafted novel, first published in 1964, Margaret Lawrence explores the life of one woman, the irascible, fiercely proud Hagar Shipley. Now over 90 and approaching death, she retreats from the bitter squabbling of her son and his wife to reflect on her past, her marriage to tough-talking Bram Shipley, her two sons, her failures, and the failures of others. Her thoughts evoke both the rich pattern of her past experience and the meaning of what it is to grow old and to come to terms with mortality. Widely acclaimed as one of Canada's finest writers, Margaret Lawrence

is best known for her four Manawaka novels, of which The Stone Angel is the first. I think that's serviceable. What do you think? Well, it's pretty good, yeah. It's not a book that's going to be easy to sell, is it? Let's be honest. I mean, you know, you can't really – the plot, such as there is a plot, is about trying to get an elderly person into an old person's home. Well, you see, but that's the thing.

That's the thing. I think it's easier to publish this book now than it would have been in 1987. I think you're right. Because, A, the issues about ageing are of increasing social relevance, and, B, the silver-haired pound or dollar is a much more significant commercial force now than it probably was in the 1980s. So the thing I found, I mean, moderate disclosure,

I have an ageing parent who, and I've been through various processes with making sure they're as well and they're as happy as they can be. And I found this occasionally a very hard novel to read, but not an untrue one. And, Lenny, it seemed to me that that is one of the things that sparks out of this novel in an era where I imagine this was not written about much at all.

Yeah. And also think, I mean, she actually published it in 64. I mean, you're talking about the British publication. I mean, the Virago publication, Macmillan published it here in 64. But I mean, I think, you know, you're asking why did I choose this rather than The Diviners. Okay, The Diviners spoke to me as a young woman. And I can see it's a harder, it's a hard book for young people, I would say. You need to be at least middle-aged, it seems to me. Because what you love about it is the spirit of this old dame. Oh, my God.

You know, she's so unfettered, isn't she? It's so brilliant. But I think when you're younger, you're probably a bit horrified by her, actually, to be honest. She's rude. Her body's out of control. I love the fact that she's so angry with her daughter-in-law because her daughter-in-law, who she hates, has to help her get dressed so that her body's revealed. It's showing the pubic hair and she's, oh, that sort of unwanted bit of womanhood she has to show her daughter-in-law. She's angry. The daughter-in-law says, have you taken your laxatives? And she's, I'm cross. And then she sits down and obviously farts. And so the woman says, oh, obviously they're not working. You know, I mean, that side of life.

I mean, she does it in a comical way, I think. But it's really, I mean, unfettered is the word I would use. It's really down and honest, isn't it? It's the body giving up on you. And then there's a contrast, isn't there, between her internal monologue and her external one. I know. So we are privileged to see how uneasy she feels about all these things. But her daughter-in-law sees a fraction of that because she doesn't want the daughter-in-law

to see it. She's snappy, right? She doesn't. She tries to row back. She's constantly telling herself, isn't she? Hush. And it's so interesting because she told her husband, who was rather an earlier version of this, wasn't he, coarse and crude and vulgar.

Yeah, there's some really grim stuff about him, frankly. Her constant refrain to him was, hush, don't shut up. You're embarrassing me. You're telling, you know, you're letting me down. And now she's that person. And, you know, I think you're letting me down and now now she's that person and you know you I think you have great sympathy for you have huge sympathy for her because it's just so real isn't it um why don't we hear a clip this is an uh an interview um with Margaret Lawrence conducted in

1966 um on the occasion of her third novel and She just talks here a bit about the background that she draws on for her writing. Well, I made up my mind that I was stuck with the Scots Presbyterians of Manitoba, you know, for better or worse, God help them and me. What do you think that background gave to you and does for your fiction? Well, it's very hard to analyse. I do have a very sort of ambiguous feeling about my background. When I think of the Scots Presbyterians, you know, and the Prairie people, It's very hard to analyze. I do have a very sort of ambiguous feeling about my background. When I think of the Scots Presbyterians, you know, and the Prairie people,

I always think of Moses' remark about the Israelites. You're a stiff-necked people. And this is true. You know, we are a very stiff-necked people. And there's lots of things in that background that I don't like at all. I think that there's a sort of suppression, a kind of repression of emotion and so on that I don't care for. And yet there's a kind of independence and strength which I, you know, admire. And I think probably this comes out particularly in the character of Hagar in my second novel, A Stone Angel. So that idea of the strength and independence of Hagar, I think this is an important theme for Lawrence. It's rooted in her life, Hagar's life.

It's not rooted in being an older person. It's rooted being in the same person. And similarly, a person like other people from her community. We'll hear another clip later on about ancestry, how important ancestry was to Margaret Lawrence's perception of the world. Lenny, do you have a bit you could read us that illustrates perhaps Hegel's flintiness? This is really near the beginning. It's only page three. And aside from immediately letting us into the voice and the inner world of Hegar, you have to admire in a very, very,

this is now me speaking as editor, you have to admire in a very, very short space of time, she is establishing the voice, the tone, many of the details you're going to need to know, and the two narratives in just a page and a half. It's rather amazing. And the other thing before starting is just she's got this opening line is, now I am rampant with memory.

I love that. And whoever heard the word rampant used like that before, actually. It's just fabulous, actually. And that's what I meant immediately. That's why I think the book is so perfect, because nothing is ill spent. And immediately she's established that this woman has a vocabulary and a fierceness rampant.

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 worthless really, has a rarity for me. I could put it in a vase and admire it, like the first dandelions, and we would forget their weediness and marvel that they were there at all. But one dissembles usually for the sake of such people as Marvin, who is somewhat comforted by

the picture of old ladies feeding like docile rabbits on the lettuce leaves of other times, other manners. Oh, 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 10 years ago out of Borden. Marvin thinks it's disgraceful of me to smoke at my age, 90 To him, there's something distressing in the sight of Hagar Shipley Who, by some mischance, happens to be his mother With a little white burning tube held saucily between arthritic fingers Now I light one of my cigarettes and I stump around my room Remembering furiously for no reason except that I'm caught up in it.

I must be careful not to speak aloud, though, for if I do, Marvin will look at Doris and Doris will look meaningfully back at Marvin and one of them will say, Mother's having one of her days. Thank you. That's brilliant. John, the thing that struck me was that you can hear the character and you can hear the voice of experience. We'll call it the voice of experience.

A 90-year-old woman written by someone in their mid-30s when she wrote that. Yeah, it's astonishing. It is astonishing, isn't it? Yeah, and I'm struck by both the irony and the sadness that margaret lawrence died age 60 you know she didn't get to be hagar but she she's created this i mean i i don't use the word shakespearean lightly but she is falstaffian in her roundness magnificent mitch magnificent you Mitch. Magnificent. You know, it's just,

there are very few, I've come across very few voices in literature. I mean, my God, she's funny. I mean, there's just, there's a little bit here where she's talking about the, you know, not long after the passage, she's talking about Doris being, she said, Doris is very religious.

She says that as a comfort, her minister who's visiting is plump and pink and if he met john the baptist in tatters of the desert stuffing dead locusts into that parched mouth for food and blazing new kingdom out of those terrible eye sockets he would faint but so likely would i there's that yeah yeah wonderful kind of almost stand-up quality of humor through yeah you know as a character, she reminded me, and the novels are not that similar, but as a character, she reminds me of Elvira,

who is the grandmother in Fight Night by my current favourite Canadian novelist, Miriam Taves. Yeah, yeah. Canadian novelist, Miriam Taves. There's a kind of, the commonality would be those characters are not primarily elderly women. They are primarily individuals who happen when we meet them to be elderly women, which strikes me as a very important distinction. I mean, obviously, Lenny, in this novel, we have a dual narrative going on, don't we? Yeah, and she talked a lot about that too, because as I say,

I read everything about her that I could, that I could get my hands on. I read her memoir. And she talked a lot about how she decided to construct this and how she had to use the chronology, the backstory of her growing up, the girl growing up, has to be absolutely chronological. You couldn't do that thing that memory really does, doesn't it? Which is like you bobble around, sometimes you remember stuff when you're six, sometimes when you're 66. But she had to keep that. Both narratives are right on. They're both in real time almost, as it were. They're both chronological. And she thought that was a bit possibly a flaw, but I don't know how she could have done it otherwise,

to be honest. But I think the way she does, you know when somebody fades from one story to another, I mean, on TV or movies, sometimes they even fade it, don't they? But sometimes in books, it's very clunky, you know, oh, I picked up a cup, reminded me of the cup when I had, you know, and, you know, that sort of thing. But she never does that, does she? I mean, you know, as I said, it was on rereading, I thought, well, okay, how did she move seamlessly between the present and the past? And it's always, it's very elegant, I would say. And that's such a trick, isn't it? To be able to make those fades without you feeling, hang on, where are we? Yeah, or cross that you've gone back to the other one. Do you know what I

mean? Like when you've got, sometimes you have dual narratives, you get so hooked on one side and then you're angry when you go to the other one. But it's all of a piece here. I loved how Hagar qualifies as an unreliable narrator in terms of both on two levels. Yes, her childhood too. Yeah, right. But also we meet her family through her prejudices against them. her family through her prejudices against them. Plus, she's also unreliable because she's, you know, having senior moments with greater frequency.

One of the things, I didn't know this when I read the memoir, I discovered that this book was kind of a crunch point in her life too, actually. Early in her life, after she married her husband, who was a civil engineer, they went to Africa. And she lived there for a while. Then they lived in London for a while. Then they went back to Canada. And she was starting to write and feeling she'd written several books. And obviously, this Stone Angel was coming into her mind. This was her fourth book, her third novel. And her husband was reading the books. He obviously supported her writing, but they're obviously starting not to be together. So she wants a divorce. And she brings her kids here to London. Her children are 10 and 7. And she says

she showed her husband wanted to see the novel, The Stone Angel. She shows it to him. She says, but this is the key. This is why I mean how interesting that it was a crux point. She said, it was the most important book I had written and a book on which I had to stake the rest of my life. Jack, her husband, didn't like it much. Strange reason for breaking up a marriage, a novel. I had to go with the old lady. I really did. But at the same time, I felt terrible about hurting Jack. I thought that was really interesting. I didn't know that before. Bit of a theme. Lenny, it's a book that changed her life. A book that changed her life. Well, how funny you say that. Her British publisher at Macmillan, when he read it, he rang her up and he said, this book's going to change your life.

Oh, wow. Look, you see a series of people using the term correctly. Yeah, using the term correctly, exactly. Where did she live in London when she lived here? came here with her kids when they were little, before she moved to the country, she went to Hampstead and she lived on Heathurst Road, which, and when I was reading that, I thought, oh, I know that address. And that's where Margaret Drabble lived, not at the same time, but Margaret Drabble also lived on Heathurst Road. And also, which is really interesting, is Margaret Drabble's very crucial novel about womanhood and making decisions. The Millstone is 1965. Margaret Lawrence is getting going 1964.

I don't know that they ever knew each other. We can bring up Margaret Drabble and ask her. Well, I asked you that because I've uncovered an even more exciting fact. You have something to reveal too, don't you? I know. You've got something up your sleeve, haven't you? Maybe Margaret Drabble and Margaret Lawrence waved to one another when they were putting the bins out in Heathurst Road.

I don't think they were there at the same time. Okay, okay. No, they weren't. When she left London, she moved to Buckinghamshire. Specifically, she moved to the village of Penn, Buckinghamshire, where she lived throughout the 1960s into the early 1970s. Do you know who one of her neighbours was in Penn? No, who was one of her neighbours in Penn?

The novelist Elizabeth Taylor. No! Oh, wow! Also lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire. And you may be interested to learn that both Margaret Lawrence and Elizabeth Taylor are featured in a library mural painted on the wall of the snug of the Red Lion Pub in Penn. Excellent.

Alongside work by other famous Penn writers' residents, including Walter de la Mer, Alison Utley, David Niven, Elizabeth von Arnim, Stanley Holloway, Pauline Quirk, and Donald Maclean, partner in espionage of Guy Burgess. Now, if anyone listens to Backlisted in Penn, Buckinghamshire, John, I want us to go and record an episode in the snug of that pub. It sounds incredible. It does sound.

That was Elizabeth Taylor's favourite pub. Right. Yeah, because we published Elizabeth Taylor too. Of course, of course. Well, this is why I thought it was, but they did live in the same village at the same time. It's fascinating. There's no idea if they knew one another, but.

It just makes me think about older women in literature. Definitely there are moments in this book where I was reminded of Angel. Definitely moments in this book where I was reminded of a little bit of Mrs. Palfrey. But you know what? I was thinking of another really good narrator who's an old woman. Did you ever read Late Call by Angus Wilson? I haven't got to. It's over there. It's on the shelf there.

I mean, it's not a very big shelf, that shelf of, you know, narrators over 70, let's be honest. Yeah. And that feels like an appropriate moment for us to break for this message from our sponsors. Welcome back, everyone. Here's just a short clip of Margaret Lawrence being interviewed in the 1970s. She's talking about the roots of her characters here. Well, the whole ancestral theme is a very important one to me,

I think partly because only through having that sense of who our ancestors were, do we really know where we came from and therefore what formed us. History did not begin with us. It began so unimaginably long ago that I don't even mean our own personal ancestors. There is a point in distant time when the ancestors become everybody's ancestors. And I think that it's important to connect with that sense of the distant past in order to try and see who we are and where we may be going. I found this really interesting. So we've been talking about how successful the portrait of Hagar is as an individual character. But Margaret Lawrence, that's not her framework, is it? She's animated by the character, the individual, but she's also very interested in the heritage of that character

and characters like her. She's interested in archetypes as much as individuals. She's interested in archetypes as much as individuals. I think she was interested in how an individual is formed by their history. And that was a big conversation in Canada just at the time that she was publishing in the 1960s. What is Canada? What's the identity? She was very conscious that she had her Scots-Irish background and she called them survivors. They came to Canada, they had to pull up like her character in the novel, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but they survived at a great cost, and the great cost was emotion, love, vulnerability.

And Hagar is a very good example of that. But I think you get the impression that Margaret Lawrence herself felt that too. I mean, remember her mom died when she was four. She was brought up by, I mean, she was brought up lovingly. She didn't complain about, she didn't have a terrible childhood in any way. But she had a childhood that was surrounded by people who were pulling themselves together to make it, to make sure that they made their way in this land. And I think the knock-on effect, I think, of that is something that's really important to her. But she then pushes that out even further. So then she starts thinking partly because she'd lived in Africa,

which is very interesting. So she'd seen Canada from a different perspective, which is the great thing for a writer, isn't it, to leave home? They see their own home in a different way. But also she was very conscious of the sort of colonial imperialism that she sort of witnessed in Africa, particularly around voices. She translates some poetry from Somali poetry. But she talks about that kind of imperialism.

Then she comes back to Canada and she realizes, too, that the same thing that Canada, and this is what I have to tell you, even I remember that very clearly going to university in the 70s, that we had this great neighbor to the south with this big literature, and then we had British literature. And that's what we were fed. We did British history in school. The Canadian flag was only the one that you know now with the red maple leaf in the center we got in the 60s we were so developing what is canada what is our identity canada was only formed as a confederate and it's 1867 i mean you know that's a big conversation about like australia you know where do you say these countries actually start and But the Confederacy was only 1867.

So she's talking about a sort of, and her book is set in the 1800s, so she's talking about a very recent history for her. That's absolutely fascinating because, again, the context, if you put that context around the Stone Angel, If you put that context around the Stone Angel, then that's illuminating in terms of reaching back into the Canadian past or the origins of Canada, as you suggest, as part of the conversation that's happening in the 1960s anyway. Completely fascinating. Could we hear then this other clip? Because I think she's going to expand on this, exactly this here. It was the first book that I wrote out of my own prairie background.

And oddly enough, the name Manawaka was one that I had made up. It's a made-up name. It's not an actual Indian name. I had made that name up many years ago when I was, oh, in my teens and had written some things out of that background and had filed it away, I suppose. And when I wrote Stone Angel, I realized that this was the name that I should use, and that for the first time, I was really writing out of my own culture and my own people.

Now, there again, people always ask me if I had ever known anybody exactly like Hagar. And the answer is no. But in my own hometown of Nipua, I would venture to suggest that there may have been a number of old women who, if not exactly like Hagar, had her courage and her indomitable spirit, and also her sense of fear of what will the neighbors think and so on. on. So that in that book, which was a very great pleasure to write, I went back for the first time and knew that I had to hereafter write out of my own culture and my own people. And I discovered when I was writing it, all sorts of idiom from my grandparents' generation that I had forgotten that I knew, and all these things came back. So in that sense, although Hagar was certainly not based on anybody who ever lived in Neapolitan, the point, and nor were any of those characters, they could have lived there.

John, rampant with memory, we heard that Lenny highlight that phrase. I think one of the things that really struck me when I was reading The Stone Angel is of a writer rampant with enjoyment's not quite right. She says she enjoyed writing it. Well, you know, that's a good line. But certainly someone who is relishing the way of looking at the world and the vocabulary that this character is giving them as a writer. Did you feel that?

Yeah, I think that there is always this tension in the book i think between the inner and the outer she's giving you as it were the the story of her life through recollection but she's also this character who is in in some kind of present and the language is what keeps you completely gripped. You know, the descriptions, almost on every page, you'll get something like, lying on my blue mosaic, like a crab at the bottom of a tiled pool, I fumed in silence. And then brilliant one line, you know, if God's a crossword puzzle or a secret code, it's hardly worth the bother, it seems to me. code it's hardly worth the bother it seems to me or always talking about herself in a kind of not exactly a sort of self-aggrandizing way but i just love it i can't keep my mouth shut i never could or the one that really struck me towards the end of the book which she says things never look the same from the outside as they do from the inside is what she restores she restores the nuance and the and complexity and the of what from the outside

might just look like a batty dementia ridden old woman who's repeating herself and wetting herself and i think it is magnificent the way she's she does that there's a line pride was my wilderness and the demon that led me there was fear i was alone never anything else and never free for i carried my chains within me and they spread out from me and shackled all i touched i mean that's that's like milton it's extraordinary we haven't touched on the the bit that i think is like the center of the book which is this mad journey that she takes herself journey takes herself on i'm just going to read a little bit now which you know john you've um you've emphasized the the shakespearean qualities of the language.

I'm going to bring the Freddie Forsyth now to the table. Hagar goes on the lam about halfway through this novel. She hits the road. First, in order to go on the lam, she has to do a bank job. And I adored this because I thought it was both dramatic and funny and true. The sense of if you've got a bluff and you're an anxious person bluffing, your brain is whirring through the outcomes simultaneously, good, bad and otherwise. So I'll just read you this she's um she's she's in a bank and she's she needs to get this money otherwise she can't hit the road

the girl behind the wicket at the bank seems awfully young to handle so much cash how many ten dollar bills must rush through her fingers in a day? It doesn't bear thinking about. What if she questions me? What asks why Marvin isn't bringing the cheque in this time? I'm all in a lather and can feel the perspiration making my dress sodden under the arms. I'm not used to so much standing. The woman in front of me is taking such a long time and seems to have a dozen transactions to perform. All kinds of papers she's handing in, pink ones and white, green checks and small blue books. She'll never be finished, never. My legs hurt. It's the varicose veins. I despise those elastic stockings and won't wear them. I should have worn them today. What if I fall? Someone will

cart me home and Doris will be so cross. I won't fall. I refuse to. Why doesn't the wretched woman hurry? What's the bank girl doing that takes her so infernally long? What if she questions me? It's my turn, suddenly. I mustn't look agitated. Do I appear quite steady, confident, casual? I know she'll look at me suspiciously. I can just see the look she'll give me the minks. What does she know of it? She doesn't even look up. She takes the cheque and counts out the bills and hands them over without a murmur. What a civil girl, really a most civil girl, I must admit. I'd like to thank her. Tell her I appreciate her civility, but she might think it odd. I must be careful and quiet. I take

the money and go, as though this sort of thing were a commonplace. I don't even look behind to see if their eyes are following. There, I did that quite well. I can manage perfectly well. I knew I could. Now, the hard parts. If only my legs hold out. I took a 2.92 before I left from Doris's hoarded stop, and so the awkward place, the spot soft as a fontanelle under my ribs, isn't acting up too badly. The bus stop is right outside the bank. Doris and I come here when we go to the doctor's. I'm sure this is where we catch the bus to downtown. It must be. But is it? There's a bench. Thank God. I sit down heavily and try my level best to compose myself. Let's see. Have I got everything? The money's in my purse. I peek to make sure and sure enough it's there. I'm wearing an old house dress. Beige, cotton patterned, perhaps a little

bizarrely in black triangles. A good dress was out the question. Doris would have wondered and besides this one's more suitable for where I'm going. have my special shoes on hideous they are with built-up arches but they do give good support I've worn my blue cardigan in case of chill it has a mended spot on one cuff but possibly no one will notice my hats my best one though shiny black straw with a nosegay of velvet cornflowers blue as a lake everything's right. I think I've got everything I require. When the bus comes, I'll just ask the driver where I can get an out-of-town bus to. Where? Drat it, the name's gone. I shan't know. He'll say, where? And I'll be standing there like a dummy without a word. What shall I do? My mind's locked. Easy, Hagar, easy. It will come. Just take it easy. There, there. Oh, shadow point. Thank the Lord

and here's the bus. The driver helps me on. A nice young man. I ask the crucial question. I'll let you off the bus at the depot downtown, he says. You can catch the bus for Shadow Point there. What fun, though, right? What fun. So how did, you know, Lenny, this is the thing, right? With a novel that we really enjoy, pace is all part of that, isn't it? Yeah.

And that's what I meant about when I reread it. I thought, oh, I could really see the skill with which she moves. She's very economical in her language. It's not even, I mean, I did reread it several times, but it's a short novel because she packs in everything very, very delicately and you get all the information you need and that's all you need. You know, she doesn't ever have that clunky thing of, you know,

I left the bank, I walked down the you need you know she doesn't ever have that clunky thing if you know i left the bank i walked down the road you know whatever she goes from the bank to the bench to the bus you know in quite quick order and it's all about the interactions then isn't it it's it's very clever you get an amazing historical spread as well i was thinking about the ancestors thing one of the points she sort of makes towards the end of the book is that i mean her father hagar's father was one of the real founders of the town it was so that it's it's that extraordinary thing from the 1880s where she's born through to the 1960s you've got pretty much the whole of the settler history of modern Canada. And you've got the Depression and the First World War, and there's a huge amount going on in the background of this novel. But that never detracts from the intensity.

I think you can read it now. If you read it, what people loved about it when she published it in. I mean, if you read it, I mean, what people loved about it when she published it in the 60s, you know, when she was called the creative godmother to an entire generation. I was going to ask you, Lenny, about this. Yeah, it's because, I mean, you can read it now without any of this knowledge. But, you know, one of the things she talked a lot about

was getting the language. She said, we have little identity. That's Canada now. We have little identity, that's Canada now, we have little identity until our story is told. And one of the things she is telling, that's why using the language and the ordinariness, the vernacular, is she's telling what she considers a Canadian story. I mean, I think it travels brilliantly, obviously, you guys agree, but it was doing something different in the 1960s. And, you know, Carol Shields has this great line, which I discovered, which is Canadian literature started in the 1960s. But it was, you know, it was a desire to find out who we were, what our identity was, what it was.

And in some ways, it was much of it was described as not like we were, what our identity was, what it was. And in some ways, much of it was described as not. We were not Americans. We were not British. We're talking about the immigrant culture of that period, obviously, because it's a huge indigenous culture and there's two languages. It's a multi-faceted country, which is its strength, but also at this period was regarded as its weakness as well. Someone like Mavis Gallant, for example, the Canadian writer, you might know, who lived most of her life in Paris. She said a Canadian is someone with a logical reason to think he may be one.

Margot Lawrence, a creative godmother to many of the i mean including clearly several of your writers but many of the writers who followed in her wake extremely important within canada within the history of canadian literature within the history of women's writing coming out canada global women's writing you give me now your theory as to why this novel is not better known outside Canada. It seems to be extremely famous, studied, respected in Canada. It seems not to travel. You know, to be honest, I tried to find out how much it's studied in Canada now. Do you think that's on the way?

I think it is. But I mean but it would be superseded i mean you know now we have so many other voices yeah in canada and and and in pursuit of something different than what she was the story she's telling we tried to bring her over sorry i didn't tell you that bit of the story so i was so thrilled because virago in 19 about 1986 we decided to publish her novels and i wrote to her and said because um at that time i was doing um i was a publicist not the publisher and i wrote to her and invited her to come to england can you imagine the thrill that i was going to meet her yeah creative godmother and then she wrote back I know and then she got cancer and she died of um lung cancer and so she never came and so I think that's one of the reasons you know that people she didn't write a lot when that's not you know that's fine I'm not that's not a criticism she What she gave us is great. But it's difficult in the publishing world.

Also, you know, to be honest, there was a real snobbery. Even when I got here in the 70s, there was a real snobbery about Canada. People were so rude to me, right to my face, saying, what culture do you have? Who are your writers? You know, and even I remember saying well we have joni mitchell what everyone thought she was american you know that's what yeah um i found a review robertson davies who's another great canadian writer who people have forgotten now but there was a review

in the times that when he published his book and it said to speak of a good Canadian novel sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. You know, the imperial culture of this country towards its colonies, not just Canada, I'm sure it was rude about Australia and New Zealand, etc. Even we published Margaret Atwood around that time, and people just thought she was this curious character, you know, from the backwoods. That took a long time to change that perception of Canadian literature. I think that's one of the reasons. I combed through the contemporary 1960s UK reviews of the Stone Angel, and most of them,

the UK reviews of the Stone Angel, and most of them, Lenny, your perception is totally correct. Most of them were short and, you know, warm enough. One of them said this is a good case for euthanasia. Yeah, right. But I have got a review here which I would like to read because I thought this was pretty good, actually. It's under the subheading, A Last Revolt Against Dependence, and it appeared in The Telegraph by Jeremy Brooks. And I'll just read it to you because I think it's as good a review as I've read of this novel.

One of the most difficult things a novelist can attempt is to penetrate the mind of an older generation. Two of this week's novels carry off this feat successfully. William Trevor writes from the comparative safety of a mildly satirical position, but Margaret Lawrence gives herself no formal protection at all. The Stone Angel is written in the first person as by a woman of over 90, a woman approaching death and now, quote, rampant with memory. The book has two separate narrative lines which approach and merge only towards the end. One is the present, the difficult world of old age, in which Hagar Shipley, battling with her physical needs and failings, is trying to resist the pressures which her stolid middle-aged son and bossy daughter-in-law are bringing to bear in order to get her moved to the quote-unquote safety of an old people's home.

The other is the hard, clear world of memory, of a life too active and difficult to allow of much reflection at the time, and difficult, to allow of much reflection at the time, although in retrospect she is angry that inherited patterns of behaviour should have forced her life into so stern a mould. The daughter of Scots-Canadian settlers, Hagar's main strength and weakness has always been her own proud willfulness. As a young married woman it prevented her from making any real contact with her rough-and-ready farmer husband. As an old frail widow, it sets her to running away from her son, away from the threat of a lost independence, away from the humiliations of physical weakness. It is at this point, in her pathetic last revolt, that the two strands meet. The irascible old woman and the stubborn young girl are both seen as having wanted and been balked of the same thing, the ability to rejoice. The triumph of this fine novel is its imaginative consistency.

It's fusing in one person of two different worlds. Hagar as an old woman is as completely convincing and quite obviously the same person as Hagar the Child, chanting the war cry of the Clannerald McDonalds at her father's knee. Isn't that great? That's a really good review. That's nice. We'll accept that from the Brits. That's generous.

Thank you. Thank you, Lenny. Thank you. Very good. Len lenny do you have a shorter little bit you could read us before we go i feel like we need to hear from hagar one last time okay so this is when um hagar is on the lam as andy says um and she's arrived in Shadow Point, and she's holed up in a very old cannery factory. And she slept overnight, a real mess, just a mess, honestly. She's weaved beetle bugs into her hat, and she's just gone completely mad. Anyway, she thinks she's going to have to get out of there.

And then she says, of course, I'd almost forgotten. I can't leave. They'd create me up in the car and deliver me like a parcel of old clothes to that place. I'll never get out. The only escape from those places is feet first in a wooden box. I'll not be forced. They can go hang the pack of them, the hounds, the hunters. Now that I've made my mind up, I become aware of my parched flesh. I've not had a drop of water since, I can't remember how long it's been, a long time. It's not the way I imagined thirst would feel.

My throat doesn't burn or even seem particularly dry, but it's blocked and shut and it pains me when I swallow. I can't drink seawater. Isn't it meant to be poisonous? Certainly. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. That's my predicament. What albatross did I slay, for mercy's sake? Well, well, we'll see. Come on, old mariner, up and out of your smelly bunk, and we'll see what can be found. Almost gaily, though God knows I've had little enough reason for it, I rise with some slight slowness and put on my hat, first taking care to brush the pebbled dust off the velvet petals as best I can.

I pick up my bag of provisions and venture down the stairs and out the door. A raucous gang of sparrows with voices bigger than themselves flicker their wings, spin and dart in a burst and frenzy of high-heartedness, and I follow after them in envy and admiration. My steps are sedate but only out of necessity. They pause and whirl and settle, and I see what they're up to. A rusty and dinted bucket beside a shed has gathered the rainwater for them and for me. I've always liked sparrows, and now they've led me here, and here's my well in the wilderness, plain as you please. Blightly as I can, I flap my arms and shoo the birds away, and they scold me from a distance. The water is murky

and tastes of soil and fallen leaves and rust, but I can't complain. Ignoring the reproachful sparrows, I take the battered pail and set it inside the doorway. Too bad to deprive them. But if a person doesn't look out after herself in this world, no one else is likely to. So good. I love the beauty of that. The pebbled dust from the velvet petals.

Thank you. That was very hard to read. Yeah, but it's so beautiful, isn't it? And the attention to the sparrows, et cetera. And then, but just finishing that line, you know, no one else is going to look after you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's time for us to leave Manawaka.

A huge thank you to Lenny for encouraging us to explore the work of the remarkable Margaret Lawrence and to Nikki Birch for making us sound as sharp and uncompromising as Hagar Shipley herself. If you would like show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 201 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you'd like to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And we're still keen to hear from you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, we're not on threads, don't call us, we'll'll call you if you want to hear black backlisted earlier

without ads subscribe to our patreon patreon.com forward slash backlisted your subscription brings other benefits if you subscribe at the lock listener level for a monthly fee it is roughly equivalent to a bottle of lemon extract at curry store you'll get not one but two extra exclusive podcasts every month. It features the three of us talking and recommending the books, films, and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who enjoyed our What Have We Been Reading slot, that's where you'll now find it. It's an hour of tunes, musings, and superior book chat. Plus, lot listeners get their names read out accompanied by lashings of praise and gratitude like this. Adam Hepinstall, thank you.

Mary Ellen Woodside, thank you. John Wixey, thank you. Adam Miller, thank you. Heidi Schwingel, thank you. Katie, oh, now, listen, Katie, if you contact me, I'll get this right next time. Sykes, Sykes, Sykes. Anyway, Kate, thank you. Thank you.

I should have checked beforehand. Andrea Curry, Jane Petrie, Michael Harper, Sue M. Clemmings. Thank you all of you so much for helping us carry on making Backlisted and doing what we love. Now, Lenny, before we go, is there anything else that we haven't talked about in terms of the Stone Angel or Margaret Lawrence that you wish to add? This is your final opportunity. I just want to say one thing about Margaret Lawrence that I discovered

when I was reading her memoir. She loved to dance and I just thought that was a great thing to discover about her she said when the kids went to bed she would go into her study and dance I thought that was wonderful brilliant um I think one the final thing I would say is that I think one of the reasons that we're we're drawn to the it's a story, but it has a grandeur about it. And I think it has a King Lear sort of thing going on. And, you know, when she escapes, the crazy man who rescues her, he is the fool, she's the fool. And she learns, you know, she really learns about who her true child is and who gave her the best love between her boys. And she was very confused all her life. And I thought that was a very Lear sort of story.

And I think that's what we're responding to as well. I think we're responding to that. That's a big story, isn't it? Love and redemption and realisation. Blow winds and crack your cheeks. Crack the stone angel. It's a great novel. Lenny, thanks so much for coming and talking to us today. Oh, thank you. You really took me down memory lane and I really enjoyed myself, as you can see. Canada is proud, I hope, or declaring war. We'll find out soon enough. We'll see.

Thanks very much, everybody. We'll see you in a full bye everyone bye bye thank you