[PHN]≡ [PDF] The Diviners Phoenix Fiction Margaret Laurence 9780226469355 Books

The Diviners Phoenix Fiction Margaret Laurence 9780226469355 Books

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The Diviners Phoenix Fiction Margaret Laurence 9780226469355 Books

As it happens, I read this almost immediately after Alice Munro's novel about growing up in Canada, LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN, and the comparison is fascinating, reflecting the real lives of the two authors, although neither novel is strictly autobiographical.* Both feature young women who come of age during the 1940s, but Morag Gunn, Laurence's heroine, is half a decade older and a true child of the Depression. Munro's book is set entirely in Southern Ontario, but Morag grows up in the prairies, as Laurence herself did. Munro's novel, exquisitely compact in scale, stops when her protagonist leaves high school; Morag Gunn, in Laurence's more ambitious saga, leaves for college in Winnipeg, marries and moves to Toronto, then spends some years in self-imposed exile first in Vancouver and then in London, before returning to the Canadian countryside in a small riverside cabin in, guess where, Southern Ontario also. Morag seldom revisits her birthplace, the fictional Manawaka familiar from several of Laurence's other novels, yet the town is in her blood; the whole book is a proof that if, like Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again in person, you cannot escape doing so in your art.

One further comparison. Munro's book is essentially a collection of short stories, beautifully formed and effortlessly contained. Laurence's novel is a collection of stories also, but a rag-bag jumble with all the rough edges deliberately showing. For we are watching a writer at work. Morag, like her creator, is a novelist, gathering material for the book that we are reading. One of her neighbors is a water-diviner, dowsing for wells; the implication is that Morag is blessed with a similar gift, searching through her past, alert to the faint twitch that will signify the presence of life. Each of the eleven chapters begins with Morag in real time, dealing with her own feelings of incompletion at the same time as her hippie 19-year-old daughter Pique is in the process of leaving home to discover her own story. But the core of each chapter comes in the Snapshots, Memorybank Movies, stories, and ballads that take her back to her past. A true past? Well, maybe not. Losing her parents at a young age, Morag was brought up by the town's garbage collector, feeding her imagination on the tales of his Gaelic ancestors and her own. Throughout the book, we see the power of myth and new myths in the making. But Morag herself is real, achingly so. Even a male reader can feel her struggles with self-doubt and rejoice in her painful discovery of herself, her body, and her talent; women, however, will not merely feel for her -- they will KNOW her.

*What a lot of wonderful Canadian women novelists there are! Besides Laurence and Munro, I have recently read books by Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Nancy Huston, Frances Itani, Anne Michaels, Carol Shields, and Jane Urquhart, among others. Many of these writers -- Laurence and Urquhart especially -- seem to have found a resonance between the pioneers of older times and women of today, pioneering a new life in a modern world.


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The Diviners Phoenix Fiction Margaret Laurence 9780226469355 Books Reviews

Margaret Laurence is rightly regarded as a major Canadian writer, and "The Diviners" may be her greatest literary achievement. As part of her "Manawaka cycle" of novels, "The Diviners" is sourced out of Laurence's conception of an archetypal Canadian prairie town and its inhabitants.

In "The Diviners", Laurence extends her reach beyond intimate stories of the community to make a statement about the mingling of various cultures within Canada, and the meaning of the act of writing. The novel centers on the character of Morag Gunn, a product of Scots-Irish ancestry, whose people live on "the other side of the tracks" in the conservative Bible-belted Manawaka. Morag's stepfather is the town junk man, a sifter of debris and a teller of tales.

The theme that Laurence steadily builds is that writers and artists are part of "tribes" of outsiders, determined in part by their ancestral roots, and anchored in their connection to their natural surroundings. Morag Gunn is portrayed as an imaginative child who invents a private world of characters out of grass and found objects. Responding to her stepfather's recital of songs and poems, Morag begins creating her own rhymes and written stories. Always a strong-willed girl, her quest to write takes her to a Toronto university community, which she then breaks away from in order to rediscover her roots.

Morag lives by her own code, which leads her away from the paternalism she finds in intellectual circles, and eventually returns her to her beginnings.

As Margaret Laurence describes the making of Morag Gunn the writer, she deliberately couches the language of "The Diviners" in a conscious imitation of the lilt of Scots-Irish speech patterns. This and other devices tend to slow the novel's progress, but the characterizations are very rich and subtle, and Laurence manages to imbue the novel with a great sense of time and movement, through her effective depictions of a progression of locales. Ultimately, readers will derive satisfaction from a sense of a life well and truly lived, which many of the best "bildungsromans" convey.

Plowing through the initial stages of this novel may require some patience, but in the end Laurence's imaginative and careful structuring has a rewarding payoff.
I did not read this until it was chosen as this month's book club selection. I'll be looking for more Margaret Lawrence in the near future!
Great book. Many themes, lots of food for thought.
I am not very far into this book yet, so I don't know the answers to all those questions I'm being asked, but it is quite fascinating. I definitely want to see where it goes.
After viewing a film, "Taking Liberties", I decided to read THE DIVINERS because part of the story line involved it being banned from a high school English class. I cannot imagine why anyone would suggest this novel to a high school English class and I am a high school English teacher. The novel centers on a woman in her 40s and I believe that you need to be a mature reader to appreciate this novel. It is marvelous! I highly recommend it (read the other positive reviews for details). But reading reviews of THE DIVINERS and other novels by Laurence here at leads me to believe that many young Canadians are being turned off by Laurence because they are not ready for the themes and even the subjects of her novels. Some works need to be read later on in life.
This book is a true classic—great story beautifully told. These memorable characters don’t always do what the reader expects, but they behave authentically. This is a solid five-star book.
While largely set in small-town Canada, The Diviners has universal themes and will haunt a careful reader. How and why do we make the decisions we do, and what can be the results?
As it happens, I read this almost immediately after Alice Munro's novel about growing up in Canada, LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN, and the comparison is fascinating, reflecting the real lives of the two authors, although neither novel is strictly autobiographical.* Both feature young women who come of age during the 1940s, but Morag Gunn, Laurence's heroine, is half a decade older and a true child of the Depression. Munro's book is set entirely in Southern Ontario, but Morag grows up in the prairies, as Laurence herself did. Munro's novel, exquisitely compact in scale, stops when her protagonist leaves high school; Morag Gunn, in Laurence's more ambitious saga, leaves for college in Winnipeg, marries and moves to Toronto, then spends some years in self-imposed exile first in Vancouver and then in London, before returning to the Canadian countryside in a small riverside cabin in, guess where, Southern Ontario also. Morag seldom revisits her birthplace, the fictional Manawaka familiar from several of Laurence's other novels, yet the town is in her blood; the whole book is a proof that if, like Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again in person, you cannot escape doing so in your art.

One further comparison. Munro's book is essentially a collection of short stories, beautifully formed and effortlessly contained. Laurence's novel is a collection of stories also, but a rag-bag jumble with all the rough edges deliberately showing. For we are watching a writer at work. Morag, like her creator, is a novelist, gathering material for the book that we are reading. One of her neighbors is a water-diviner, dowsing for wells; the implication is that Morag is blessed with a similar gift, searching through her past, alert to the faint twitch that will signify the presence of life. Each of the eleven chapters begins with Morag in real time, dealing with her own feelings of incompletion at the same time as her hippie 19-year-old daughter Pique is in the process of leaving home to discover her own story. But the core of each chapter comes in the Snapshots, Memorybank Movies, stories, and ballads that take her back to her past. A true past? Well, maybe not. Losing her parents at a young age, Morag was brought up by the town's garbage collector, feeding her imagination on the tales of his Gaelic ancestors and her own. Throughout the book, we see the power of myth and new myths in the making. But Morag herself is real, achingly so. Even a male reader can feel her struggles with self-doubt and rejoice in her painful discovery of herself, her body, and her talent; women, however, will not merely feel for her -- they will KNOW her.

*What a lot of wonderful Canadian women novelists there are! Besides Laurence and Munro, I have recently read books by Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Nancy Huston, Frances Itani, Anne Michaels, Carol Shields, and Jane Urquhart, among others. Many of these writers -- Laurence and Urquhart especially -- seem to have found a resonance between the pioneers of older times and women of today, pioneering a new life in a modern world.