{"product_id":"the-stone-angel-phoenix-fiction","title":"The Stone Angel (Phoenix Fiction)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Stone Angel  The Diviners  and A Bird in the House are three of the five books in Margaret Laurences renowned \"Manawaka series \" named for the small Canadian prairie town in which they take place. Each of these books is narrated by a strong woman growing up in the town and struggling with physical and emotional isolation.  In The Stone Angel  Hagar Shipley  age ninety  tells the story of her life  and in doing so tries to come to terms with how the very qualities which sustained her have deprived her of joy. Mingling past and present  she maintains pride in the face of senility  while recalling the life she led as a rebellious young bride  and later as a grieving mother. Laurence gives us in Hagar a woman who is funny  infuriating  and heartbreakingly poignant.  \"This is a revelation  not impersonation. The effect of such skilled use of language is to lead the reader towards the self-recognition that Hagar misses.\"Robertson Davies  New York Times  \"It is Laurences admirable achievement to strike  with an equally sure touch  the peculiar note and the universal; she gives us a portrait of a remarkable character and at the same time the picture of old age itself  with the pain  the weariness  the terror  the impotent angers and physical mishaps  the realization that others are waiting and wishing for an end.\"Honor Tracy  The New Republic  \"Miss Laurence is the best fiction writer in the Dominion and one of the best in the hemisphere.\"Atlantic  \"Laurence demonstrates in The Stone Angel that she has a true novelists gift for catching a character in mid-passion and life at full flood. . . . As Hagar Shipley daydreams and chatters and lurches through the novel  she traces one of the most convincingand the most touchingportraits of an unregenerate sinner declining into senility since Sara Monday went to her reward in Joyce Carys The Horses Mouth.\"Time  \"Laurences triumph is in her evocation of Hagar at ninety. . . . We sympathize with her in her resistance to being moved to a nursing home  in her preposterous flight  in her impatience in the hospital. Battered  depleted  suffering  she rages with her last breath against the dying of the light. The Stone Angel is a fine novel  admirably written and sustained by unfailing insight.\"Granville Hicks  Saturday Review  \"The Stone Angel is a good book because Mrs. Laurence avoids sentimentality and condescension; Hagar Shipley is still passionately involved in the puzzle of her own nature. . . . Laurences imaginative tact is strikingly at work  for surely this is what it feels like to be old.\"Paul Pickrel  Harpers\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44974509129781,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226469360","price":27.42,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226469362.jpg?v=1770661746","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-stone-angel-phoenix-fiction","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}