Book Club discussion

Great book, a reminder of how important perspective is and we can use our own internal narratives to justify things that are outwardly cruel to others all the while feeling like the victim.

The book starts off with us feeling sympathetic for Hagar, a smart and strong young woman, she bucks convention and chooses to marry the man she loves against the advice of her father and despite the murmurs of local town girls like Lottie.

The book switches between the past and the present. In the present, Hagar is terrorizing her son and daugther in-law while playing the vicitim card throughout the book. Through these time shifts we see what an unreliable narrator Hagar is. Though it is unclear if the unreliability is an effect of age, it's also the cummulative effect of lying to oneself over time. Hagar's pride and stubborness has served to sabotage her relationships with everyone she cared about and ultimately her own mind.

The stone angel is a is a metaphore for the fact that things that can seem so stable, even destined to be, can and will be felled by time.

In the past, the culmunation of Hagar's rivalry with her friend Lottie sees them finally teaming up to sabotage the relationship between their adult children, only to have tragic results.

I think the ending of the book is of Hagar dying, the ambiguity of the ending is due to Hagar's not realizing, or denying what is actually happening to her up to the end.