This is really more like 3.5 stars for me, but I suppose it does belong a notch above my other 3 star ratings, so it will have to be a 4. After reading and loving The Stone Angel, I decided to try and read all of the Manawaka series of books and, although The Diviners is the last in the series, it was the next I was able to get, so it was the next I read. I think that it is mainly in comparison to The Stone Angel that this book left me a little cold.I've been trying to figure out why I wasn't as impressed by this book, especially since it has a feeling of the epic, of a long and complicated journey, and I think in the end my complaint is that I didn't connect to the narrative on a personal or deeper level. This is especially odd since the character of Morag Gunn is a novelist and spends time explaining the complicated craft of writing literature, of trying to write a story on more than one level, so there must be something here I'm just not getting, because I'm certain the author took pains to put it in. I don't know much of Margaret Laurence's personal history, but even the author blurb shows that she has inserted much of her personal history into the character of Morag: born in a prairie town; orphaned young; wrote for the local newspaper; escaped to the University of Winnipeg; got married; moved away (Morag to Toronto, Laurence to Africa); got divorced; moved to the west coast; finally settled on a small farm in rural Ontario; enjoying success as an author along the way. Every time Morag mirrored what I knew about Margaret Laurence's history, I felt a bit taken out of the story, as though I had seen a little flag that said: these parts are true.As writing a novel is a bit of alchemy I don't really understand, I liked these self-reflective bits on the process:I used to think that words could do anything. Magic. Sorcery. Even miracle. But no, only occasionally.And:Probably no one could catch the river's colour, even with paints, much less words. A daft profession. Wordsmith. Liar, more likely. Weaving fabrications. Yet, with typical ambiguity, convinced that fiction was truer than fact. Or that fact was in fact fiction. I also liked the introspective bits about who we are and what little we show of our true selves. It's true that we can no more imagine, or really want to know, the inner-workings of anyone else's mind, any more than we can help being shocked by seeing a teacher at the grocery store when we're little kids:Whatever is happening to Pique is not what I think is happening, whatever that may be. What happened to me wasn't what anyone else thought was happening, and maybe not even what I thought was happening at the time. A popular misconception is that we can't change the past - everyone is constantly changing their own past, recalling it, revising it. What really happened? A meaningless question. But one I keep trying to answer, knowing there is no answer. And:The hurts unwittingly inflicted upon Pique by her mother, by circumstances - Morag had agonised over these often enough, almost as though, if she imagined them sufficiently, they would prove to have been unreal after all. But they were not unreal. Yet Pique was not assigning any blame - that was not what it was all about. And Pique's journey, although at this point it may feel to her unique, was not unique. Morag reached out and took Pique's hand, holding it lightly. And I like this bit because not only did I also for some reason switch from calling my mother "Mum" to "Ma" when I was teen, but so has one of my own girls. Like my own Ma, I find it more amusing than distancing: This Ma bit is new. It is as though Pique, at fifteen, has now decided that Mum sounds too childish and Mother possibly, too formal. The word in some way is a proclamation of independence, a statement of the fact that the distance between them, in terms of equality, is diminishing, and the relationship must soon become that of two adults. On balance, Morag is glad. But it will take some inner adjustment. I liked the bits where Margaret Laurence references Susannah Moodie and Roughing It In The Bush because it's good to get the references. I still don't know if it makes me want to read the books of Moodie's sister, Catherine Parr Traill, though.I appreciated how The Diviners took ideas from The Stone Angel full circle-- especially how it was discovered that the plaid pin from John Shipley was traded to Lazarus Tonnerre for a knife, then traded to Christie Logan for a pack of cigarettes, the knife given to Morag. Knowing that Pique would eventually be in possession of both the pin and the knife closes the circle on all of the families, uniting the Scots with the Métis and mocking the last of the small town's prejudices. I can also imagine how brave it was for Laurence to write about a strong woman who decided to have a baby without a husband, at a time when even the maternity nurses in the hospital told her she was lucky to be allowed to have her baby there. I understand Margaret Laurence received death threats over this fact and I salute her grit and honesty for writing it. Perhaps it was the experience of watching someone fighting a battle long won that prevented me from becoming fully invested. Perhaps, like old Royland, I had simply lost the powers to divine on this one.
Feminist. Very strong female character in the person of Morag Gunn. Orphan at the age of four, she was taken into custody by the couple Christie and Prin Logan. Christie is the town's scavenger (garbage collector) and divining is scavenging. But don't get the notion that the female characters here are scavengers or loser. Morag rose from that sorry early years and made own life-altering decisions in her life so strong that she seems to have the biggest ball among the characters including her good-for-nothing professor-husband and even her subsequent lovers.The most interesting part of this book for me is the first 50 pages. In the opening scene, Morag finds a note from her 18-y/o daughter Pique who has just left home to join her boyfriend and go to Morag's childhood town of Manakawa (a town in Canada. You see, Margaret Laurence was a Canadian). That note, plus the photographs that Morag keeps in the house trigger the memories of her past. This was followed later by a series of memory banks in her mind. For me, the use of those tools was so effective in telling Morag's back stories: short and succinct. Like patches or glimpses of the whole thing but enough for the reader to get the idea of who was the 47-y/o present-day Morag when she was young.The reading is easy. The prose is engaging. The plot has enough interesting twists to keep you going. Laurence is also very effective in showing rather than telling. I have not been to Canada and my sister lives in Winnipeg for two decades now. So, while reading I was imagining the surroundings although I know that this was written in the 70's and things should have surely changed. Oh I just miss my sister and should visit her someday probably when I finally retire from my corporate job.But if you decide to read this book, it is because you like strong female characters. For me this brought back for me the strong fictional characters of Jane Eyre, Helen Graham and Janie Crawford. Strong female creations of strong female authors.The novel is old but its theme (feminist) and message (pro-choice: women have the right to decide what to do with their lives) still very much ring true today.
What do You think about The Diviners (1993)?
Si può cambiare il passato? Si può, ricordandolo, trovare un filo che leghi ogni cosa, come i rabdomanti trovano l'acqua che scorre? Si può fare con le parole (e cosa sono queste: un dono, un miracolo, la voce degli antenati)? O forse non si è rabdomanti, ma spazzini come Christie?"Una domanda priva di senso. Ma alla quale continuo a cercare di rispondere, sapendo che non c'è risposta.”Tante domande e nessuna risposta. Eppure, un pianto di liberazione alla fine del romanzo. In fondo nessuna risposta è importante. “La necessaria esecuzione...quella sì che era importante.” (Qualcuno direbbe che si risolve tutto nel tentativo.)
—Reiko
Wow, I really enjoyed this book although it isn't perfect. The characters are very independent and it adds to the bildungsroman element but sometimes it felt like the characters were isolating themselves too much. I understand that the book's making a point about female bildungsroman and kunstleroman, the isolation and independence of the characters is an interesting approach conceptually but it sometimes felt excessively narrow and shallow."Shallow" is not really a word I would use to generally
—Caro
I am giving this book a rare 5 star review, partially because I had not expected to like it, and I loved it. If I was a writer, I think my style would be very similar to the writing in this book. I loved the "Memory Bank Movie" passages. It reminded me so much of several significant events in my own life, and I can vividly rember them. I think the characters in the book were depicted very realistically and believable, flaws and all. The book was written in the 1970's and I hope our society has evolved somewhat beyond the cruel and thoughtless way humans can treat each other, but in many ways the challeges and prejudicies depicted in the book are still going on today. As i have lived in manitoba all my life, it was also a hoot to have all the familiar geography of my home province referred to. The book was not preachy at all, but showed some of the very complicated layers of human realtionships in a very compassionate way.
—Heather(Gibby)
