So far as she is concerned, there is no debate. My whole hulk shakes, the blubber prancing up and down upon my rib cage, and I betray myself in shameful tears. And then, just when I’ve gained this ground, I falter. They stand transfixed by my thundering voice. “If you make me go there, you’re only signing my death warrant, I hope it’s clear to you.

They have even selected a lovely nursing home: Silverthreads. The house they live in is hers-or it was, she can’t remember if she really did sign over ownership somewhere along the way-and now that her grandchildren are grown and gone, it becomes clear to her that her son and daughter-in-law have plans to send her packing too. Meanwhile, in the present day, Hagar is living in a city on the coast, with her eldest son Marvin, and his wife Doris.

Her bed is made-a bed that will produce two sons over the next two decades before she finally gets it in her mind to leave. In her typical spirit of defiance, she chooses Bram Shipley, a local farmer and widower fourteen years her senior who is uncouth, uneducated and unambitious.

She is sent off to finishing school in Toronto and returns armed with skills of a proper lady, expected to accept one of the many suitable matches her father parades before her. But her gender limits the possibilities available to her. Hagar is every bit her father’s daughter, hardworking, hard-headed and proud. Her mother does not survive her birth, so she and her two older brothers are raised by their father, a prominent local businessman, and Auntie Doll, the family’s housekeeper. The daughter of a Scottish immigrant, Hagar was born in Manawaka, Manitoba, a town inspired by the author’s own hometown of Neepawa, sometime midway through the second half of the nineteenth century. In person, it’s easy to imagine that Hagar would have been a difficult person to like, but as she chafes against the physical and familial restrictions of her current circumstances, and her thoughts drift back to revisit the lost relationships that continue to haunt her, it is impossible not to hope that she will find a way to go gentle into that good night. This singular, unforgettable character whose internal monologue-by turns funny, caustic, indomitable and confused-is the very soul (though she might dispute that designation) of Margaret Laurence’s classic 1964 novel, The Stone Angel. A woman nurtured and fueled by a stubborn pride and determination for ninety years, staring down death and, if refusing to live in the past, pulled to make some reluctant peace with it all the same. 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. Each day, so worthless really, has rarity for me lately. Some people will tell you the old live in the past-that’s nonsense. I don’t often indulge this, or not so very often, anyway.

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence