The Fire-Dwellers

Manawaka Sequence

by Margaret Laurence, Sylvia Fraser (Afterword)

Stacey MacAindra burns – to burst through the shadows of her existence to a richer life, to recover some of the passion she can only dimly remember from her past.

The Fire-Dwellers is an extraordinary novel about a woman who has four children, a hard-working but uncommunicative husband, a spinster sister, and an abiding conviction that life has more to offer her than the tedious routine of her days.

Margaret Laurence has given us another unforgettable heroine – human, compelling, full of poetry, irony and humour. In the telling of her life, Stacey rediscovers for us all the richness of the commonplace, the pain and beauty in being alive, and the secret music that dances in everyone’s soul.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Classics, Literary Fiction, Canadian Literature, Literature, 20th Century

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Canada's classic authoress was born Jean Margaret Wemyss on July 18, 1926 in the prairie town of Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada. Her Mom, Verna, passed away early. Her Aunt Margaret helped her Father take care of her for a year, then they married and had a Son. Their Father died two years afterwards. Aunt Margaret was a Mother to her, raising the kids in theirr maternal Grandfather's home.

Margaret wrote stories in elementary school. Her professional writing career began in 1943 with a job at the town newspaper and continued in 1944, when she entered the Honours English program at Winnipeg's United College (University Of Winnipeg.) After graduating in 1947, she was hired as a reporter for The Winnipeg Citizen. That year, she married Jack Laurence, a civil engineer.

Jack's profession took the couple to England, Somalia, and eventually Ghana, where Margaret gained an appreciation for Africa and the storytelling traditions of its peoples. It was in Africa that their children, Jocelyn and David, were born, and when Margaret began to work seriously on her writing. Her book of essays about and translations of Somali poetry and prose was published in 1954 as A Tree for Poverty. A collection of short stories, The Tomorrow-Tamer, as well as a novel, This Side Jordan (both focusing on African subjects) were published after Margaret returned home to Canada. Her fiction was thereafter concerned with Canadian subjects, but she maintained her interest in African literature and in 1968 published a critical analysis of Nigerian literature, Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists 1952-1966. Present in her African works is a concern with the ethical dilemma of being a white colonialist living in colonial Africa.

In 1957, Margaret and her family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, for five years. In 1962, Margaret & Jack divorced. She moved to London, England for a year, followed by a cottage in Buckinghamshire for ten years, although she visited Canada often. During this period, Margaret wrote her first works with Canadian subject matter.

"The Stone Angel" was published in 1964, and was the first of her "Manawaka novels", the fictional prairie community modelled after her hometown of Neepawa, Manitoba. It was followed by "A Jest Of God" in 1966 (for which she won her first Governor General's Award,) "The Fire-Dwellers" in 1969, and "A Bird In The House" in 1970. Margaret received critical and commercial acclaim in Canada and in 1971, was honoured by being named a Companion to the Order of Canada.

In the early 1970s, she returned to Canada and settled in Lakefield, Ontario. She continued to write and was writer-in-residence at the University Of Toronto, the University Of Western Ontario, and Trent University. In 1974, Margaret completed her final novel, "The Diviners", for which she received the Governor General's Award and the Molson Prize. It was followed by a book of essays, Heart Of A Stranger" in 1976 and several children's books: "Jason's Quest", "The Olden-Days Coat", "Six Darn Cows", and "The Christmas Birthday Story". Her autobiography "Dance On The Earth" was published in 1987.

Margaret died on January 5, 1987 at her home in Lakefield, after learning her lung cancer diagnosis was terminal. She is buried in Neepawa Cemetery, a few metres from the stone angel which inspired her novel.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better to marry than burn, St Paul said, but he didn't say what to do if you marry and burn.

Meet Stacey. She's mom of four, and wife of Mac, who is mainly a monosyllabic grump. She's also sister of Rachel from A Jest of God, which I recently read. Rachel, who is living in tiny Manawaka with her controlling, hypochondriac mother, envies Stacey and her marriage, children, and ultimately her freedom living in Vancouver. In this book, we see Stacey isn't so free-wheeling as her sister imagines.

It hit me early on that this is a Canadian, female version of Rabbit, Run. Let's face it, suburban family life ain't always what it's cracked up to be. I'm sure most people wake up at some point when the kids are fighting or the spark has disappeared from the bedroom or the house is a mess or money is scarce and they dream about when they were young and golden and the world was a hopeful, promising place, and think damn, is this IT??

Stacey feels trapped and alone. I get it. It was probably pretty groundbreaking when it was published in 1969. Somehow though, I didn't have the same connection with Stacey as I have with other Margaret Laurence heroines. Maybe it was partly to do with the format. For whatever reason, in this book (not her others, to the best of my memory) she abandons quotation marks. And, often, periods at the end of dialogue sentences. This gets a big ol "MEH" from me. In addition, there are many, many (many) interior monologues that are indicated by a "-". Then, flashbacks to Manawaka, the small town where Stacey grew up, are indicated by an extra indentation. Even halfway through the 300 pages, I still hadn't acclimatised to this system and found it annoying.

Plus, it is a bit too long. Too many of the same going-nowhere fights between Stacey and Mac. Too many long, interior soliloquies. It seems sacrilegious to say this about a Laurence book, but... it was a bit of a slog. I was also disappointed that she didn't describe the city of Vancouver with more love, care, and detail. It might have been set anywhere.

I've now read all the books from the Manawaka series - this is my least favourite. It's still Margaret Laurence though, and it addresses an everyday person experiencing the agonies of an everyday life, so there are worse ways to spend one's time.

I was myself before any of you were born. (Don't listen in, God - this is none of your business.)

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Okay--so in some ways I'm mean as all get out. I'm going to quit worrying about it. I used to think there would be a blinding flash of light some day, and then I would be wise and calm and would know how to cope with everything and my kids would rise up and call me blessed. Now I see that whatever I'm like, I'm pretty well stuck with it for life. Hell of a revelation that turned out to be."

I have to say that I loved Stacey. She's 39 with 4 kids from 2 to 14, a marriage that has become just so-so, too much padding on her hips, and is feeling trapped in a life that she needs to escape sometimes, just a little alone time would be nice for starters. She smokes and drinks too much, always says the wrong thing to her husband's boss, and doesn't understand her kids. Even though she doesn't really believe in God, she has an ongoing conversation with him in her head because she has no other close friends. She doesn't think he's running the world as efficiently as he could be, but hates to say too much in case he gets retribution by hurting one of her kids, who she worries constantly about.

This novel takes place over a few months when circumstances dictate that Stacey has to accept the way things are instead of pining for the girl she used to be. There are a lot of men she'll never love, a lot of dances she'll never attend, and a lot of things she'll never know, but that's okay. She has what she has, which is actually pretty nice.

"I would have liked to be a great courtesan, like that one in France who went on until she was about ninety-five. Still beautiful, it is said, although personally I find that hard to credit. Well, such was quite plainly not meant to be your lot, Stacey. Never mind. Give me another forty years, Lord, and I may mutate into a matriarch."

Did I mention that Stacey has a great sense of humor?

I set out to read Laurence's 5 Manawaka novels this summer, and this is #4, so I'm right on target. I have loved them all so far. One warning about this book for some people: there are no quotation marks, which may bother a few. I didn't find it hard to follow who was speaking or the differences between Stacey's thought and what she actually says, I thought the author made it perfectly clear.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Margaret Laurence knows how to create a character that seems so real you feel you have crawled inside her skin and looked out through her eyes into the world she inhabits. I hadn’t intended to read this book until next month, but having completed A Jest of God, in which Rachel Cameron talks of her sister, Stacey MacAindra, I felt compelled to know more of Stacey’s story.

In many ways, Stacey is every woman. She is a housewife, a mother, a spouse, but she is also herself, a woman who cannot conceive of how she went from being young, pretty and full of life, to being taken for granted, overweight, and insecure.

Man how antediluvian can you get? Is that what she is thinking? I don’t know. But I have this sense of some monstrous injustice. I want to explain. Under this chapeau lurks a mermaid, a whore, a tigress. She’d call a cop and I’d be put in a mental ward

She is frightened, but mostly of things that even she could not define, she loves her husband and children, and sometimes she hates the constraints and responsibilities they throw onto her shoulders. She wonders if she misunderstood her own mother and she worries what her children will carry forward from her attempts to shape their lives, when she has been so ineffectual at shaping her own.

I stand in relation to my life both as child and as parent, never quite finished with the old battles, never able to arbitrate properly the new, able to look both ways, but whichever way I look, God, it looks pretty confusing to me.

She dreams of being something she is not; she looks back and wonders what might have been. She is searching for some meaning in the way things are, but at the same time she knows she basically has a good life. What she is longing for is that moment of untroubled freedom that only youth have, and that flies out of our grasp before we can even define it. Hers is the perfect inner voice, tinted with both wisdom and sorrow, and recognizing the irony in her situation.

I wish I could see you. No, I don’t. I wouldn’t want you to see me, not now, not in my present shape. Of course, you’ll have changed, too. But not as much. Women may live longer but they age faster. God has a sick sense of humor, if you ask me.

She recognizes that she is not the only damaged person. She is surrounded by them, but she wonders why it has to be that way and whether anyone can ever escape, even for a moment. What she most seems to lack is anyone to whom she can candidly speak the truth and receive the unvarnished truth back again.

Nothing is ever looked at and torn up and thrown away like scrap paper. The abrasions just go on accumulating. What a lot of heavy invisible garbage we live with.

In many ways this book is heartbreaking, but in just as many ways it is comforting. There is a strength to Stacey and a resilience in her that gives you hope. You want to comfort her, to tell her she is doing fine, and to assure her that everyone suffers from some of what she is feeling, but most of us survive.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ladybird, ladybird,
Fly away home;
Your house is on fire,
Your children are gone.

So begins The Fire-Dwellers, with Stacey MacAindra, formerly of Manawaka, Manitoba, now a suburban Vancouver housewife and mother of four, nearly 40, torn between flying away and flying home; dwelling in the fires there until her children need her no more. I read this book for the first time when my eldest daughter was first born, and although I didn't feel trapped in suburban ennui, I could recognise the truth of Stacey's situation, so beautifully portrayed here with internal monologues, halting arguments with her husband, Mac, and fretful attempts to raise her children without "ruining" them in the ways predicted by magazine articles and quizzes. I am now older than Stacey, and happily still don't feel trapped in the ways she is, but the truths in this book are still eternal.

This is the scene that has stayed with me over the years and I'll put it all here so I can revisit it at will:

Tommy Dorsey Boogie. The clear beat announces itself. Stacey finishes her drink, fixes another one, drinks half of it quickly and sets the glass down on top of the TV. She looks at her gold sandals, her green-velvet tights. She puts her arms out, stretching them in front of her, her fingers moving slightly, feeling the music as though it were tangibly there to be touched in the air. Slowly, she begins to dance. Then faster and faster.

Stacey Cameron in her yellow dress with 
pleats all around the full skirt. Knowing by
instinct how to move, loving the boy's close-
ness, whoever he was. Stacey twirling out
onto the floor, flung by the hand that would
catch her when she came jazzily flying back.
Tommy Dorsey Boogie. Stacey spinning like
light, whirling laughter across a polished floor.
Every muscle knowing what to do by itself.
Every bone knowing. Dance hope, girl, dance
hurt. Dance the f-ing you've never yet done.

— Once it seemed almost violent, this music. Now it seems incredibly gentle. Sentimental, self-indulgent? Yeh, probably. But I love it. It's my beat. I can still do it. I can still move without knowing where, beforehand. Yes. Yes. Yes. Like this. Like this. I can. My hips may not be so hot but my ankles are pretty good, and my legs. Damn good in fact. My feet still know what to do without being told. I love to dance. I love it. It can't be over. I can still do it. I don't do it badly, see? Like this. Like this.

— I love it. The hell with what the kids say. In fifteen years their music will be just as corny. Naturally they don't know that. I love this music. It's mine. Buzz off, you little buggers, you don't understand. No —I didn't mean that. I meant it. I was myself before any of you were born. (Don't listen in, God — this is none of your business.)

The music crests, subsides, crests again, blue-green sound, saltwater with the incoming tide, the blues of the night freight trains across snow deserts, the green beckoning voices, the men still unheld and the children yet unborn, the voices cautioning no caution no caution only dance what happens to come along until

The record player switches off.

— Was I hearing what was there, or what? How many times have I played it? God it's three thirty in the afternoon and I'm stoned. The kids will be home in one hour. Okay, pick up the pieces. Why did I do it? Yours not to reason why, Stacey baby, yours but to go and make nineteen cups of Nescafe before the kids get home. Quickly. Jen? Lord, she must've been awake for hours. Oh Stacey.


Interestingly, I had forgotten the following scene, which is just as important:


Katie has put on one of her own records. Something with a strong and simple beat, slow, almost languid, and yet with an excitement underneath, the lyrics deliberately ambiguous.

Katie is dancing. In a green dress Katie MacAindra simple and intricate as grass is dancing by herself. Her auburn hair, long and straight, touches her shoulders and sways a little when she moves. She wears no make-up. Her bones and flesh are thin, plain-moving, unfrenetic, knowing their idiom.

Stacey MacAindra, thirty-nine, hips ass and 
face heavier than once, shamrock velvet
pants, petunia-purple blouse, cheap gilt san-
dals high-heeled, prancing, squirming, jiggling

Stacey turns and goes very quietly up the basement steps and into the living room.

— You won't be dancing alone for long, Katie. It's all going for you. I'm glad. Don't you think I'm glad? Don't you think I know how beautiful you are? Oh Katie love. I'm glad. I swear it. Strike me dead, God, if I don't mean it.


I recently listened to The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, and in it the author asks a psychologist why mothers and their teenage daughters butt heads as they do. The doctor replies that it has to do with the passing of the reproductive torch — the mother is reluctant to be put out to pasture and the daughter feels the weight of the responsibility, along with a surge of the power of her new position in the family. I raised an eyebrow at this Freudian slant — I don't think it really applies to my relationships with my own teenage daughters (in my mind we're not even butting heads), or the relationship I had with my own mother for that matter, but it seems somewhat applicable to Stacey. What's interesting is how it plays out in the shadows: Stacey dances alone, wanting her children to know, without her telling them, I was myself before any of you were born; Stacey watches Katie dancing alone and wants her to know, without telling her, that she's glad for her daughter and the future ahead of her; Stacey even wonders if her mother ever danced, but knows it's a question she'll never ask.


The Fire-Dawellers really is from a different time. I am also a housewife, a stay-at-home-mom, and while I don't experience life the way that Stacey does (I don't know if anyone does, anymore), she is a real and breathing character, someone whose truth I can't help but identify with, at any age it seems. Another stellar book from the Manawaka Series.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember one particular camping trip we took as a family. I don't remember how old I was - probably pre-teens at any rate. It was after dinner and my father and brother were going fishing. I wanted to go fishing with them too, but I had to stay behind and help my mother with the dishes and putting things away. It was a pivotal moment in my life and I distinctly remember thinking, "If this is what it means to be a woman, I don't want any part of it!"

The fantastic Canadian author, Margaret Laurence, paints a desolate picture of a housewife and mother, who is desperate to find some meaning to her life. The era was the 60's, at the same time that I was resentfully doing the camp dishes. Stacy, nearing 40, is a stay-at-home wife and mother of four. She lives mostly in her head as she disappears as a person.

The writing style emphasises that isolation. Quotation marks are conspicuously missing. That gives me a feeling of muteness, of silence, almost as if there is an inability of speech. I don't know if that was intentional or not, or just my reaction. I had that same reaction to another book that did not use quotation marks.

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too little can be said, because there is too much to say.

While reading two previous books of the series I thought: what a great novel. This time was the same. And I think it was the best of the three, or at least I rooted for the characters the most.

Watching like Stacey "fought with the fire", meaning she coped with family life, was like watching real people. How many of us struggle with similar doubts and troubles?

Moreover, Margaret Laurence didn't try to be polite or give us "a nicer version". She wrote thoughts that women/mothers have, although they do not tell them aloud, because they are afraid of judgment, etc.

The novel didn't have "a big ending", it showed the power of the circle of life, which keeps repeating. And like Stacey, sooner or later we tell ourselves: I'm a stranger in the now world. Nonetheless, we don't stop "dwelling the fire".

[Hillary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I zoomed through this book! It's an easy read, but highly enjoyable and engaging.

The book is narrated by both the author and through the voice of the main character, Stacey MacAindra. She's a 1960s housewife with 4 kids, living in the suburbs of Vancouver. Her husband, Mac, is a salesman - at first for an essential oils company, and then later for a bogus vitamin company called Richalife. Stacey is a bit bored with being a mother, with being left alone all the time with her kids, with her uncommunicative husband and his phony vitamin pills and ridiculous God-like boss, with hips that are too big.

It was so refreshing to read a "slice of life" book that was candid, hilarious, truthful, and simple. So many of Laurence's observations from the 1960s voiced through Stacey are equally applicable today.

I highly recommend this book!

Amazingly, I found a review of "The Fire-Dwellers" from the 60s tucked away in the back of my copy. The review is by Philip Sykes and it is pretty spot-on:

"Margaret Laurence's new woman -- a woman of our time, bitchy and brave as she finds her compromise with life.

Mrs. Stacey MacAindra of Bluejay Crescent, Vancouver, is an entirely contemporary woman, one of the first in Canadian fiction. Mrs. Stacey MacAindra is the heroine of Margaret Laurence's novel "The Fire-Dwellers".

We celebrate Margaret Laurence for her women. Her earlier Canadian novels were built around unforgettable women - Hagar in "The Stone Angel" and Rachel in "A Jest of God", which was filmed by Paul Newman as "Rachel Rachel."

Stacey MacAindra shares their roots in the enclosed life of the Manitoba town of Manawaka; she is in fact the older sister of Rachel Cameron, the yearning schoolmarm in "A Jest of God". Unlike Rachel, Stacey left the small town before it could scar her and joined the suburban middle class. She is a salesman's wife with four kids and a mortgage, entrapped not by a hypochondriac mother but by the four walls of the family room, disturbed not by Main Street gossips but by the violence on TV. Her concerns are as contemporary as those of any pert, heavy-hipped matron pushing a cart to the Muzak in your supermarket.

The most contemporary thing is the interior candor, the self-awareness. Rachel Cameron phantasized lovers in a lonely bed: the unblushing Stacey MacAindra addresses herself in a bitchy and self-mocking monologue, earthy and colloquial.

This interior voice, which invests Stacey MacAindra with charm and her story with unity, is an irreverent third party in her conversations. While she mouths politeness it curses, debunks, jibes. It comments on her crises, as when she rows with her husband about their mutual infidelities:

What about the girl, Mac? Thor's secretary. That's different, I suppose. It's okay for you to touch her.
Yes it is different, if you really want to know. It's not what you're obviously thinking.
I bet. I just bet.
---- We go on this way and the needle jabs become razor strokes and the razor strokes become hunting knives and the knives become swords and how do we stop?

Knives become swords . . . As Stacey MacAindra slops gin, struggles to reach her changing children, commits adultery, her unspoken voice remarks the small capacity of individuals to communicate with and know one another. It marks the silences between husband and wife, father and son. The wounding silences.

The trouble with stating so universal a problem is that you can never hope to resolve it, and "The Fire-Dwellers" never does. It is an inconclusive story. Stacey and her family lurch through a series of emotional storms and find some kind of surcease: "Temporarily they are all more or less okay."

If the story is flawed, the portraiture is splendid. Stacey MacAindra's husband, children and neighbours are less characters than the imperfectly focussed material of her perceptions. The one significant development is the psychic maturing of a woman as she rounds 40, moving from restless seeking to a stoic's compromise: "From now on, the dancing goes on only in the head."

It is the authentic portrait of a woman of our time."

Some favourite quotes:

"Very far away, in a galaxy countless light-years from this planet, a scorpion-tailed flower-faced film buff sits watching a nothing-shaped undulating screen. He decides he's seen enough. He switches off the pictures which humans always believed were themselves, and the imaginary planet known as Earth vanishes." (p.80)

"Along with the Superware, families are shown on each page. Kids beam peacefully and undisturbedly. Mothers with young untired faces glow contentedly. Fathers with young untired faces smile proudly and successfully. Grandmothers with young untired faces gaze graciously and untroubledly." (p.89)

"Today I saw a girl walking up the street towards me, a plain girl unfashionably dressed, and from a distance I thought it was myself coming back to meet me with a wiser chance. But it wasn't." (p. 89)

"But how is it I can feel as well that I'm spending my life in one unbroken series of trivialities?...It would be nice to have something of my own, that's all. I can't go anywhere myself. Only as Mac's wife, or the kids' mother. And yet I'm getting now so that I actually prefer to have either Mac or one of the kids along. Even to the hairdresser, I'd rather take Jen. It's easier to face the world with one of them along. Then I know who I'm supposed to be." (p. 95)

"Perhaps it isn't that the masks have been put on, one for each year like the circles that tell the age of a tree. Perhaps they've been gradually peeled off, and what's there underneath is the face that's always been there for me, the unspeaking eyes, the mouth for whom words were too difficult." (p.170)

"He believes you have to work very hard in this life, just to keep your head above water, or to escape whatever it is that's waiting to crush you like a grape. And even then you may lose at any moment...I'm not sorry he hasn't got anywhere. Where is there to get, that you would all that much want to be?" (p.199)

"You want to ask them if they know any longer what the poles mean, or if its a language which has got lost and now there isn't anything to replace it except silence and sometimes the howling of men who've been separated from themselves for so long that it's only a dim memory, a kind of violent mourning, only a reason to stay as drunk as they can for as long as they can. You don't ask anybody anything. You haven't suffered enough. You don't know what they know. You don't have the right to pry. So you look, and then you go away." (p.227)

"It's like church - you think maybe if you go, the faith will be given, but it isn't. It has to be there already in you, I guess. Or maybe you have to persevere." (p.277)

"EVER-OPEN EYE STREETS IN CITIES NOT SO FAR AWAY ARE BURNING BURNING IN RAGE AND SORROW SET ABLAZE BY THE CHILDREN OF SAMSON AGONISTES VOICE: RIOTS ARE SAID TO BE WELL UNDER CONTROL IN ---- I see it and then I don't see it. It becomes pictures. And you wonder about the day when you open your door and find they've been filming those pictures in your street." (p.305)

[MargaretDH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, Margaret Laurence gets me every time. I think at this point I would be terrified if she wrote a happy character.

I semi-recently read The Feminine Mystique, and Laurence's Fire Dwellers is like the fictionalization of that book. Stacey, mother of four, raises her children in suburbia. She feels trapped, and a shadow of her real self. She batters herself against the walls of her cage, and we watch her try and find the self she feels she has lost. The tupperware parties don't help.

And, like Laurence's protagonists, Stacey is wryly, incisively self-aware. She knows exactly what's going on, and exactly what she's doing, and that makes it all the more tragic.

Laurence peppers the book with short flashbacks Stacey's teens and time as a young women. They so effectively highlight how trapped Stacey feels, and how she's lost her sense of self. The dialogue is also wonderfully wrought, full of the of the half-sentences and shorthand we use with the people closest to us.

If you like character study novels, please pick this up.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

,,[...] und alles, was die Züge jemals sagten, war: Mach dich auf, irgendwohin, nur damit was passiert, steh auf und verlasse diese Stadt."

Was hat das Leben mit Ende 30 zu bieten, wenn man mit einem mäßig erfolgreichen Mann verheiratet ist, vier Kinder hat und den Tag damit verbringt, in der kanadischen Provinzstadt der 60er den Haushalt zu schmeißen, um dem Mann den Rücken frei zu halten? Stacey hat sich in jedem Fall mehr erhofft, als einen Alltag, der sich zwischen Verkaufspartys für Kochutensilien bei der Nachbarin und Friseurbesuchen aufspannt. Jung hat sie ihre Heimatstadt Manawaka verlassen, um das Leben zu finden. Gefunden hat sie nicht nur einen eintönigen Alltag, sondern leider auch einen Ehemann, der sich kaum um ihre Situation schert. Stacey hat dafür zu sorgen, dass die Kinder ruhig sind, das Essen auf dem Tisch steht und ihr Äußeres für Firmenpartys vorzeigbar ist. Spricht Stacey mit ihrem Mann über ihre Wünsche und Ängste, endet das Gespräch im Streit. Denn die Ehefrau versteht alles falsch, kann nicht nachdenken und mache es dem Mann absichtlich schwer. Heute würde man wohl von einer toxischen Beziehung sprechen, zur Entstehungszeit des Romans war das aber wahrscheinlich die traurige Realität vieler Hausfrauen.

Margaret Laurence schrieb (auch) den dritten Band der Manawaka-Reihe, nachdem sie sich von ihrem Ehemann getrennt hat. Auch wenn "Das Glutnest" weit entfernt von einem autobiografischen Roman ist, spürt man Laurences Wut, ihren Frust, der in Staceys auswegslosem, lieblosen Eheleben zum Ausdruck kommt. Wie auch die Autorin entwickelt Stacey ein Alkoholproblem - wenig verwunderlich, wenn man bedenkt, dass sie sich angewöhnt hat, sich selbst stets schlecht zu beurteilen und sich selbst mit äußerst negativen Gedanken begegnet. Besonders gut kommt das übrigens durch die Bewusstseinströme zur Geltung, die Laurence immer wieder als erzählerisches Mittel einsetzt.

Trotz der Nähe zur Figur, wirkt Laurence Roman aber fremd auf uns. Das mag daran liegen, dass der Roman bereits 1969 verfasst wurde, jedoch erst jetzt von Monika Baarte ins Deutsche übersetzt wurde. Das mag zwar zu dem ein oder anderen befremdlichen Leseerlebnis führen, gleichzeitig werfen wir durch Laurence Augen einen Blick in die Vergangenheit, vor deren Hintergrund unsere Gegenwart auf einmal unheimlich fortschrittlich wirkt.

[C. (Comment, never msg). · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Fire-Dwellers” is another of Margaret Laurence's famous books. I use the word “book” instead of “novel” because it entailed a weird approach that was a stream of Stacey's thoughts, instead of a clear plot and goal. Events follow a chronology but we observe a scattering of thoughts at first. Thereafter; action, dialogue, and the narration take on the recognizable shape of a story that we follow more easily. Indeed, my investment rose when the progression of a plot appeared.

Margaret, our revered authoress from Neepawa, Manitoba: lived in Africa with her husband, Jack, when they married; an engineer. Their homeland featured afterwards. These present characters from a town standing in for Neepawa but are unrelated; even though this and “A Jest Of God”, pertain to sisters. However, Rachel remained in Manawaka and Stacey settled in Vancouver; marrying and mothering. I was sure I could look forward to a sequel but this is about Stacey's brood. Her husband for example, argues about how to handle their middle children: an agitated boy rejecting a younger one. Their fourteen year-old is a responsible girl of 1969. Jen is two, thus Stacey can seldom go out.

With a common scene on the cover of climbing into a car and for example, not liking to tell her reverend Father-in-law that they aren't religious; I love Margaret's ordinary household. I cheered when she dared to find pleasure later. All conversation and inner thoughts forge ahead without quotations marks, much less any “she said, he said” that many authors interpose unnecessarily. Impatient readers might bail out before this book hits its stride. We route for Stacey and her family later. Excitement revs up that engrosses us more and more. Three stars own up to a slow start but please know that a worthwhile, many-layered story surfaces.

[Wandaviolett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurzmeinung: Ich hätte mir mehr kanadisches Flair gewünscht.
Eine Ehe in Kanada
Stacey und Mac MacAindra haben früh geheiratet, zwanzig Jahre später haben sie vier Kinder. Mac ist ein Kriegsveteran aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und hat verlernt über Gefühle zu sprechen, im Grunde war er nie gesprächig.Stacey hat viele Talente, aber nie die Gelegenheit, sich zu verwirklichen. Als Mac, der als Handelsvertreter viel auf Reisen ist, sein zu vertreibendes Produkt und damit Company und Chef wechselt, eines, das neben seinem eigentlichen Zweck, einem Nahrungsergänzungsmittel gleich noch ein neues Lebensgefühl vermitteln will, denn heute verkauft man so, der Name sagt alles „Richalife“ - fängt die Ehe ernsthaft an zu bröckeln, denn der für die örtliche Dependance verantwortliche Betreibsleiter agiert übergriffig und Stacey wird pampig.

Der Kommentar:
Die Autorin beschreibt eine gängige mittelständische Kleinstadtehe an der kanadischen Pazifikküste mit ihren typischen Problemen. Leider bleibt das typisch Kanadische dabei völlig auf der Strecke, die Story hätte sich überall abspielen können.
Das Leben der Familie ist manchmal lustig und manchmal tragisch, meist aber trivial, doch wirklichkeitsgetreue Dialoge machen das Buch lebendig. Die Menschen freilich sind uns nur zu sehr bekannt samt den Dreh- und Angelpunkten ihrer Miseren. Kinder binden, Männer gehen fremd, wenn zwei dasselbe tun, ist es nicht dasselbe, Männer ducken sich unter ihre Chefs, Sprachlosigkeit macht Beziehungen kaputt, gemeinsames Leben bindet und man tut, was man tut muss; wenn man Glück hat, besinnt man sich auf das, was man hat und liebt und bleibt seiner Rolle treu. Wenn man Glück hat, verzeiht man sich gegenseitige Defizite. Jeder hat sein Päckchen zu tragen. Amen.

Fazit: Nichts Neues unter der Sonne, aber nett erzählt.

Kategorie: Klassiker.
Verlag. Eisele, 2023

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel that must have made quite a sensation on first release, capturing with amazing detail the dawn of post-60s women's liberation and questioning the position of homemaker, housewife, and mother in the suburbs of modern city life. In fact, the label "contemporary" wouldn't have done it enough justice, even for 1969. Reading it now, it's a remarkable historical artifact that maintains its power in spite of so much time having passed, and the monumental changes that have occurred in society. This wasn't at all what I was expecting...and it's all the more wonderful as a result.

[Jas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was exceptionally well-written. I was superbly impressed with the skillfulness of Laurence's creation of characters and the depth of personality that she created.

At the core of it, it was about the difficulty of relating to others, expressing ourselves, and the sensation of being trapped in your head. Despite being in a totally different life situation from the protagonist, I found her challenges absolutely relatable and, in some ways, I felt like I understood my own mother better.

I also appreciate that while this is deeply in the realm of second wave feminism, I was impressed with the awareness of colonialism and intersectional concerns.

I'm excited to read more Margaret Laurence!

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I found this book a little hard to read with the unusual dialogue and writing format, I still greatly enjoyed this story of a fearful and trapped 60s housewife. I found the subject matter quite racy for the time it was written but I could identify with many of Stacey's fears and thoughts and ideas. Being a stay at home mom myself, I appreciated the honesty that she expressed towards the care she gave her kids and how she sometimes felt trapped but still worried about them so immensely. I love Laurence and this book was no exception.

[Clementine · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a painfully-detailed, beautifully-written novel about a dissatisfied housewife in late 60s suburban Vancouver sounds like something that would bore you to tears, do not read this. If you share my interest in narratives about the minutiae of women's domestic lives, particularly in the 60s and 70s, then you will probably enjoy it. The characters are profoundly authentic, Stacey's suburban ennui simply intolerable.

[Sierra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read on someone’s mothering and wife experience. Read for a class in university.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence is the third book in the Manawaka series. The books in the series do not necessarily have to be read in order, although that is how I’m doing it. There are two common links between all five books - first, Manawaka is a fictional small town in the prairies where all the central female characters lived at one time and second, there is always a central female character who is also the narrator. Each book describes the innermost thoughts; as well as, worlds of the main character.

As usual, Laurence’s writing in The Fire-Dwellers is brilliant. Her prose is very descriptive and her insight into human lives and relationships is remarkable. Laurence is also innovative and is way ahead of her time as a writer. It was almost 50 years ago when this book was published and yet there are zero quotation marks used with dialogue, despite dialogue being a major component of the story. Laurence also writes in a sort of stream of consciousness. In The Fire-Dwellers, the main character Stacey spends a lot of time in her head, thinking and critiquing herself and others and talking regularly to herself about what to do and not do etceteras. It is Stacey’s inner voice, like the one may of us have, that Laurence shares so cleverly so we can get to know Stacey.

The inner mind activity is part of Laurence’s other books as well, but it plays a particularly significant role in telling Stacey’s story in The Fire-Dwellers. Stacey Cameron MacAindre is Rachel Cameron’s older sister (the narrator in A Jest of God.) Rachel has been married for about 16 years. Her husband is rather uncommunicative and works a lot of time away from home. She is busy raising 4 children, from age 2 to 14, so she really has her hands full. Throughout the day while taking care of her children, she does not really have any adult company. Oftentimes at night when her parental responsibilities continue while her children are in bed, Stacey is the lone parent because her husband Mac is still working. Despite being lonely, Stacey is fiercely loyal to her husband and children and takes her responsibilities very seriously.

At the same time however, she feels stuck and at times the responsibly feels seems overwhelming. She left her childhood home in a small town to get away to excitement and is now feeling terribly guilty about wanting to get away again from her isolation in Vancouver and the responsibilities with her children and husband that come with it. She feels much the same as when she fled her childhood home - a yearning for change and excitement.

I didn’t related as well to Stacey as I did to both previous main characters - Hagar Shipley, an older women with dementia who can no longer live alone and Rachel Cameron, a school teacher who never married and continued to live in her widowed mother’s home to take care of her. I am not sure why this was the case; although I do know that I am not used to a household full of children and found Stacey’s inner chatter a bit whiny and incessant to the point of becoming irritating. It was apparent she was lonely, felt unappreciated and wanted to have a more exciting life. I totally got this but felt she needed to stop complaining and to do something about it - talk to her husband, talk to a counsellor, try to meet new people or get involved in some activities outside of her home. Unfortunately, she seemed to take a lot of solace in her gin and tonic and used alcohol to numb her pain.

I am a bit surprised that I did not feel more empathetic towards Stacey. It wasn’t until the latter part of the book, when Stacey displayed her vulnerability and started to reach out to help her husband and encourage him to be more communicative that I felt more connected. She experienced a few real life scares during when she fully displayed how caring, guilty and frightened she was about not being a good mother (her terminology.) She seemed to take her job so seriously (too seriously in my opinion) that I started to “like” her more. Her understanding of her father-in-law and his issues and the lengths she went to help him, despite her husband’s lack of initiative in helping his own father quite impressed me and showed me a softer, more loving side of herself.

There are lots of 60’s memories in this book - peace marches, house décor, hats, dresses worn while shopping, weekly hair salon visits etceras in this book. It was a waltz down memory lane.

Like her first and second books in the series, as mentioned earlier, Laurence’s writing, her dialogue and descriptions are impressive. She can be sparse and to the point or write lengthy lyrical descriptions. Both demonstrate wonderful writing skills. Laurence’s insight into human nature and relations are incredibly astute but I think what makes her most impressive, as a writer who wrote this book 50 years ago, is her character development, not just describing with words but also understanding of them to their core and her innovation with the written word.

Some extras you can look forward to - an Alex Colville painting reproduced on the cover and an interesting Afterword by Sylvia Fraser.

It is not surprising that Laurence’s Manawaka series, including The Fire-Dwellers has withstood the test of time and will likely remain a classic for years to come. While it took a while for the book to really engage me with the primary character. As usual Laurence’s writing was strong. The first half read like 3 stars but the second half was so much stronger that I rounded up an overall 3 1/2 star read to 4 stars due to the strength of the second half.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read this book as a teenager almost fifty years ago, it failed to impress me. It contained too many feminist clichés that I was seeing elsewhere in novels and movies. Truck drivers were macho morons. Marriage was a prison in which women were persecuted by their husbands, children and in-laws. Members of one generation who disapproved of the smoking of another generation were unreasonable tyrants.

"Fire-Dwellers" provides an adequate introduction to the world view and thematic pre-occupations of Margaret Laurence but fails to display much of her great talent.

[Buchdoktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stacey MacAindra aus dem fiktiven Manawaka war eine durchschnittliche Schülerin, als sie in der elften Klasse ungeplant schwanger wurde. Kurz vor ihrem 40.Geburtstag ist sie Mutter von 4 Kindern und lebt mit ihrem Mann Mac an der kanadischen Pazifikküste. Mac hat als Vertreter offenbar jedem erreichbaren Haushalt eine Enzyklopädie aufgeschwatzt und erwartet nun spektakulären Erfolg mit Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln von „Richalife“ , die er Interessenten aufgrund eines ausgefüllten Psycho-Fragebogens verordnet. Mit zwei ewig streitenden Söhnen, einer pubertierenden 14-Jährigen und einem Kleinkind, dessen Sprachentwicklung längst einem Spezialisten vorgestellt werden sollte, hat Stacey alle Hände voll zu tun. Ihr Haushalt wirkt chaotisch, sie selbst zickzackt wie ein Kolibri zwischen Depression, Selbstzweifeln und sonderbaren kulturellen Angeboten hin und her. Wenn sie sich mal etwas vornimmt, bekommt mit Sicherheit eines der Kinder Bauchweh. Mit Staceys chronischen Schuldgefühlen und ihrem aalglatten Winden, um nur zu nichts eine Meinung haben zu müssen, kündigen sich interessante Pubertätskonflikte mit der 14jährigen Katie an … Solange sie sich keine Ziele setzt und sich nicht zum ersten Schritt überwindet, wird sich an ihrer Lage nichts ändern.

Stacey vertritt eine Generation von Frauen, die schwer ausdrücken konnten, warum es ihnen schlecht geht und häufig mit einem Rezept für Beruhigungsmittel vom Hausarzt zurückkehrten – Mothers Little Helper. Würden Stacey und Mac miteinander sprechen, müsste sie ihm sagen, dass ein Job als Scharlatan kaum eine angemessene Arbeit für einen Vater von vier Kindern ist. Mac wiederum hätte als Veteran des Zweiten Weltkriegs so manches zu erzählen, das von Nachrichten der Gegenwart aufgewühlt wird.

Die Schilderung von Staceys leicht nachvollziehbarer Situation sorgt für einige Längen, bis Margaret Laurences Figuren endlich erkennen, dass Mac als Pfarrerssohn und Stacey als Mädchen aus einem Präriedorf ihre Heimatorte und Herkunftsfamilien nicht einfach ablegen können, sondern immer noch mit sich tragen.

Durch eingeschobene Rückblenden in ihre Kindheit, Staceys Alpträume, sowie den abrupten Wechsel von Ichperspektive und dritter Person bildet der Roman Staceys Sprunghaftigkeit treffend ab. Im Vergleich zu den Vorgängerbänden konnte dieser 3. Band aus dem Manawaka-Universums mich weniger fesseln.

-----
Der Manawaka-Zyklus (nach Wikipedia)
Der literarische Durchbruch gelang Laurence mit ihren späteren Romanen, die größtenteils in Kanada in der Gegend um ihren Geburtsort Neepawa spielen. Diese Romane werden bisweilen als „Manawaka-Serie“ bezeichnet. Die ersten drei Teile,
The Stone Angel (1964),
A Jest of God (1966) und
"The Fire-Dwellers" (1969) schrieb Laurence noch in England nach der Trennung von ihrem Ehemann. Eine breite Leserschaft erreichte sie in Kanada, wo sich Laurence mit der Trilogie als eine der bekanntesten Schriftstellerinnen etablierte. "The Stone Ange"l ist bis heute ihr meistgelesenes Werk. 1974 wurde die Manawaka-Serie mit "The Diviners" abgeschlossen, ein Roman, der verschiedene Figuren aus den früheren Teilen aufgreift und als ihr ambitioniertestes Werk gilt. Weitere Romane veröffentlichte sie danach nicht mehr; sie beschränkte sich auf Essays und Kinderbücher.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canadian literature has seemed, at least to me, haunted by the reputations of the two Margarets, Atwood and Laurence. When I was younger I avoided their books like the plague. I had dim impressions of serious, dour stories about Native girls in small town Manitoba where nothing interesting ever happens. As a teenager I would much rather take refuge in the thick arms of swords-and-sorcery tomes.

Older and wiser, or so I like to think, I finally got around to actually reading a Margaret Laurence book. The Fire-Dwellers is the story of a suburban Vancouver housewife as she struggles with her insecurities, loneliness and disintegrating relationship with her husband. The novel is full of the detritus of suburban culture -- shady wonderpills, Tupperware parties, useless night courses at the local college, and horrifying news competing for airtime with breakfast table squabbles.

Yeah, my fifteen-year-old self would have hated it. Stacey McAindra, the protagonist, is an ordinary individual with at least her share of petty flaws, but she's actually quite well-developed. Her interior monologue seems real and familiar. Laurence captures perfectly the beige melancholy of suburbia that turns increasingly deadly over the course of the book, and refuses to take any easy way out. Like real people, her characters disappoint you, frequently can't make up their mind, and stubbornly refuse to be villains.

The format of The Fire-Dwellers is quite interesting, alternating between Stacey's interior monologue, description mixed with unmarked dialogue, and Stacey's fantasies. This creates some ambiguity and confusion, but it always adds to the scene and the atmosphere Laurence builds.

So, while not all of my preconceived ideas about Margaret Laurence where shattered, I did enjoy The Fire-Dwellers quite a bit. It has depth and a realness that many novels strive for but few achieve.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit slow to get going, but in the end I liked it. The style is slightly offputting to start with -- it's Stacey's internal monologue, interspersed with speech. But you get used to it, and it's an effective way of getting inside Stacey's head. The paperback publisher did Laurence a disservice again, as with A Jest of God: "The poignant novel of a woman searching desperately for new love". That's not what it's about. The book was published in 1969, and Stacey is the embodiment of the "problem with no name" that Betty Friedan wrote about in The Feminine Mystique. Struggling to raise four children, agonising over whether she is "ruining" them, with a frustrated, uncommunicative husband and few friends, Stacey asks, "Is this all there is?" Incidentally I only realised belatedly that Stacey is the sister of Rachel, the main character in A Jest of God. Interesting that while recognisably suffering from the same oppressive family background, the two of them had reacted in different ways.

It could be depressing, but luckily Laurence provides some resolution at the end -- perhaps a bit too neatly, but it's still satisfying. Not my favourite Laurence, and it's dated, but well worth reading.

[Zen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Laurence's writing style is similar to that of David Adams Richards. Their books are about ordinary Canadians and focus on the feelings and perceptions of the characters, how they react to the day to day situations of their lives. Plot is secondary to emotion and sensation. These books are important but not always that easy to read.

The Fire-Dwellers focuses on Stacey Cameron MacAindra, Vancouver housewife circa 1969. Stacey is the sister of Rachel, the main character in A Jest of God, the 2nd book in Laurence's Manawaka series. Stacey and Rachel have responded to their small town upbringing in different ways; Rachel has stayed behind in Manawaka to look after their demanding widowed mother, while Stacey left town as soon as she could get on a train. Yet as Rachel feels trapped by small town life, so does Stacey feel trapped by her marriage to Mac and her four children.

While the book has some specific elements that place it in the late sixties (Stacey gets her hair done every week,wears a girdle, listens to stories about the Vietman War on the radio), Stacey's longing to be seen as a person, not just as a wife and mother, still resonates. Mostly this book reminds me of a song sung by Glen Campbell, released in 1968, the year before this book was published:
Ah such are the dreams of the everyday housewife, you see everywhere, anytime of the day,
The everyday housewife, who gave up the good life for me.

[Joana · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I started reading this, I kept telling myself as a warning that this book was written almost 50 years ago and could therefore feel a bit dated. However at the beginning it didn't really feel like that because the style is modern (almost post-modern with strange, confusing way the dialogue/punctuation is used) and the irony in the main character's inner dialogues is sharp. This is a book about a woman disatisfied with her life (especially her family life, as she didn't work outside the home) and who constantly fails to communicate with the people around her. She is ridden with guilty about most things but ultimately doesn't really assert herself to feel any better than she does. She felt a little pathetic, at least 50 years onwards, and by the end of the book I just wanted to bash the characters' heads against each other, hoping this way they would have a proper conversation. I expect a lot of this was done on purpose to show the stiffness of manner these people suffered from: how the man cannot show any doubts or fears about his life, how the woman cannot demand more than the husband gives her, etc. The afterword compares this structure to a soap opera: a bit dramatic and a series of episodes and I agree that it felt like that at times.

I am glad I read The Diviners before or I might give up on Margaret Laurence having read only this book. It was readable but nothing special.

[Nicholas Beck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ground-breaking perhaps when it was written in the late 60's. Stacey is trapped in a marriage with 4 kids and an emotionally distant husband. It's a soap opera-ish, middlebrow novel which attempts to address the social suburban malaise that affected many couples of that era (probably still does) as the shine wore off their first romantic dreams and the blunt realities of mortgages and kids and dreary housework set in. (Just add 2 working spouses for the current age)

Wrestling with dreams of escape and interior monologues, Stacey seeks to carve a life for herself apart from kids and husband. Secondary characters are thinly sketched, Stacey's interlude with a younger lover feels too pat to be believable, the novel sometimes feels as if Laurence had a checklist of issues which she hurriedly namechecks, attempted suicide of neighbor, marijuana use by teenagers, disenfranchisement and degradation of Metis and First Nations, Gin and tonic to relieve stress, riots and wars broadcast on TV etc. All sort of thrown into the mix, willy nilly.

Since the novel is mainly focused on Stacey's thoughts and experiences, it drags on a little and I thought the novel might have benefitted from being shorter. Stacey comes to terms with her life in the end as Laurence wraps things up. I on the other hand thought the last line was an odd way to end this story.

[Sasha Boersma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this after Jest of God, expecting a similar writing pace. Maybe I should have had more of a break between the two.

I really struggled to follow the narrative - who said what and what was a Stacie thought. I had to stop halfway through to try to reframe, and couldn't stick with it - skimming the last few chapters.

The story itself is valuable - the isolation of Canadian housewives in the 60s when everyone moved and had distance between their new home and their hometowns. It also portrayals marriage in the working class where spouses didn't work in a team, the woman's work was to manage the family peacefully while the man worked. But as expressed late in the text, Mac felt equally isolated with work, not feeling before that he could express these worries to his wife, because he also felt the need to work and provide for family in isolation.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stacey is even more miserable then her sister Rachel. Stacey may be viewed as "having it all" because she moved away from her home town, married and had children but in reality her marrage is toxic, and she frequently takes out her bitterness and resentment on her children. On top of that shes sexually harrassed by her husbands boss/coworkers, and slapped around her children a few times after "losing patience" for their lack of compliance with social gender norms. A truely cringeworthy novel that I had to put down after the first few chapters.

[Zuzana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's get my Margaret Laurence goggles on:
The peculiar thing about this book is that the first one hundred pages bored me out of my mind but at the same time I couldn't stop thinking about how scandalous it must have been when it was published in the 60's. A mom of four, not happy with every waking second of her tedious suburban existence for the whole world to read?????
The Fire-Dwellers is the third book in the Manawaka sequence, published 1969. When you have read The Diviners (and possibly written a thesis on it heh), the cumulative work in the cycle, anything that came before it can hardly top it. Although some of the town's characters make an appearance, The Fire-Dwellers is not even set in Manawaka, which intrigues me and my goggles! The small prairie town is replaced by the coastal metropolis of Vancouver; interestingly, it is never explicitly named, like the novel could have been set anywhere. Stacey's memories bring Manawaka back here and there but the majority of the text remains in the city.
The style is weird and stream of consciousness-like; dialogue, never quote-marked, mixed with Stacey's frustrated thoughts, memories and fantasies. There's one too many "everything's all right, nothing's the matter" marital fights going nowhere and Stacey's incessant interior musings edge on whiny; but the writing is great and it does what it is supposed to - makes you feel like you're stuck in her head, too.
At the end of the day, the main themes - growing older, lack of communication, media pressure on women, feelings of loneliness when you "have everything you ever wanted", feeling trapped in your own life - are pretty universal and so 50 years later the novel is not as outdated as it might seem.
It's jut kind of a drag with an underwhelming ending.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novel in the Manawaka series a more uncomfortable read than the previous two. Ostensibly, a rampant mid life crisis seen in forensic detail by our protagonist Stacey, daughter of Hagar (Stone Angel) and sister of Rachel (Jest of God). Stacey has escaped small town living and yet her life is as desperate and unfulfilled as her mother and sister.

Set in the 1960s Stacey represented, to me, why the womens movement was sparked. We are trapped inside a middle aged woman, a housewife with four children, a male provider who is constantly trying to instill masculinity into his sons. It did feel like I was trapped and this made for a difficult read.

Laurence, as is her strength, conjures great well rounded characters but somehow Stacey's scattergun inner life was less compelling for me than her earlier novels. Or perhaps I felt less compassion for Stacey than I did for Hagar and Rachel

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not resonate with me at all. I read the afterword that says it was a Canadian version of the feminist movement writings of the time, and I can see that in the story. There was nothing in the narrative to draw me in though. I did not feel empathy for her life or crisis's, I did not care for her family. I did not care for her self recriminations or strange thoughts. I found her view of her marriage disappointing but it evoked no real emotion.
I had thought my uninterest was due to the characters but maybe the time and place this story is written from is so far outside my experience that I could not appreciate it.

[Charlystante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Staceys Ehe ist ein Glutnest, in dem es brodelt.
Stacey ist darin gefangen, weil sie als Mutter von vier Kindern keine Zeit für sich selbst hat.
Ihren Tagesablauf bestimmen ihr fordernde Ehegatte und Kinder, die sie über alles liebt, die sie aber einengen.
Deswegen stiehlt sie sich Zeit mit Lügen, um ihre Sehnsüchte und Träume zu verwirklichen.
So sehr sie sich wünscht, über ihre Gefühle mit ihrer Familie sprechen zu können, gelingt ihr das nicht nicht, weil sie trotz allem keine Veränderungen möchte.
Deswegen führt sie Zwiegespräche mit Sir Gott hadert, bittet, entschuldigt, will Kompromisse mit ihm schließen.
Bei vielen beschriebenen Szenen
musste ich leise schmunzeln. Ich konnte mich in die jeweiligen Situationen sehr gut reinversetzen.
Es ist eine Hausfrau - Muttergeschichte, die zwar in den 60er Jahren angesiedelt ist, die es leider heute immer noch gibt.
Die letzten 20 Prozent des Buches habe ich dann schnell überlesen, es hat mich nicht mehr gefesselt. Das Ende finde ich etwas kitschig.