From the Bookshelf of CanLit Challenge…

The Fire-Dwellers

Margaret Laurence,

Sylvia Fraser (Afterword)

Discussion: CanLit Challenge 1968-2000

Discussion leader: Ibis3

Why we're reading this: Book #18. This is a novel about a woman of my mother's generation. A woman who has met the expectations s…more
[close] Book #18. This is a novel about a woman of my mother's generation. A woman who has met the expectations set out for her by society but yearns for more.

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CanLit Challenge 1968-2000

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By Ibis3 · 1 post · 4 views

last updated Mar 03, 2013 03:12PM

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What Members Thought

May 18, 2012 Pooker rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, fiction

It is rare for me to read a book a second time. There are too many more to be read. Newer and sparklier. But of course there will not be any more new and sparkly books from this author and that makes me sad. I discovered Margaret Laurence at the same time as I discovered Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. In the late sixties and early seventies I gobbled down everything they had written up to that point. What glorious gluttony! I've continued to read my faves and it gave me heart palpitations when It is rare for me to read a book a second time. There are too many more to be read. Newer and sparklier. But of course there will not be any more new and sparkly books from this author and that makes me sad. I discovered Margaret Laurence at the same time as I discovered Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. In the late sixties and early seventies I gobbled down everything they had written up to that point. What glorious gluttony! I've continued to read my faves and it gave me heart palpitations when Alice Munro announced she was retiring a few years back. I have discovered who I am in the reading of these women's books and in many ways I have continued to "grow up" with them.

So while I would not have searched out this old book by Margaret Laurence, when it fell into my hands, I thought that I would have another visit. And a visit it was. A visit with an old friend.

When I first read this book I would have been about 20 years younger than Stacey MacAindra. I am now about 20 years older than she.

Stacey is 39 years old. She is a housewife with a grade 11 education, mother to four children, and wife to Mac, a hard-working man. She has all she thought she ever wanted, certainly everything that women were supposed to want at that time. And yet she is dissatisfied. She worries about her kids, worries about her husband, thinks she's failed all of them. She drinks too much and feels trapped. She wants out. She wants someone to love her for who she is, someone to talk to her and listen to her.

When I first read this book I was just 19, a new mother and I instantly related to Stacey through her internal conversations. I had the same kind. "Oh please God, don't let me be one of those mothers who throw their baby in the dumpster." I don't now recall whether I was conscious of the age difference between Stacey and me. I doubt that I was, for surely I would have thought then that by 39 I'd have my act together and not be so insecure. Unlike Stacey, surely by 39, I'd know how to say what I want, would have a more equal relationship with my partner, be comfortable with who I was and be defined by more than just my role as wife and mother.

To be honest, when I picked this book up a couple of days ago, I could not remember the story, but as I read it all came back to me. Visiting Stacey again was like visiting that younger me. While I am reasonably confident that my 39 year old self and my 50+ year-old self was and is not so dissatisfied as Stacey was, I know that that insecure person who bargains with God and herself still resides within me as I suspect she resides within us all.

What I found really interesting was how, as I read, not only did this book itself come flooding back into my memory, but so too did the whole Manawaka series. So not only did I visit with Stacey, I also had a good chat with Hagar, Rachel, Vanessa, Piquette and Morag. How glad I am to have known them.
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