[Manawaka Sequence 01] • L'ange de pierre

THE STONE ANGEL is the portrait of a proud, energetic and impulsive woman -

Hagar Shipley - as seen through her own eyes at the age of ninety. Her

reflections on her past form a vividly-etched chronicle of a girlhood shaped

and dominated by her father; of a breakaway marriage to a virile but negligent

farmer; of her complex ties to two sons - the conventional Marvin, and the

flamboyant, adored John, whom she eventually destroys. Hagar in widowhood is

still fiercely responsible, still armored by her steely humor, still isolated

by her life-long habits of pride and self-reliance. But she does not remain

untouched. In Hagar's ultimate self-confrontation, her final reckoning of the

wages of love, Margaret Laurence has created one of contemporary literature's

most stunning images of a woman's fate.

THE STONE ANGEL is the first part of the acclaimed Manawaka series which also

includes A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The

Diviners.