Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer

by Donez Xiques

Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer is an engaging narrative that contains new and important findings about Laurence's life and career. This biography reveals the challenges, successes, and failures of the long apprenticeship that preceded the publication of the The Stone Angel, Laurence's first commercially successful novel.

Donez Xiques demonstrates the importance of Margaret Laurence's early work as a journalist in her development as a writer and covers her return to Canada from Africa in the late 1950s. She details the significance of Laurence's "Vancouver years" as well as the challenges of her year in London prior to settling at Elm Cottage in Buckinghamshire, when Laurence stood on the verge of success.

The Margaret Laurence known to most people is a public figure of the 1960s and 1970s; matriarchal, matronly, and accomplished. The story of her early years in the harsh setting of the Canadian Prairies during the 1930s - years of drought and the Great Depression - and of her African years has never before been chronicled with the thoroughness and vividness that Xiques provides for the reader.

Appended to this powerful new biography is a short story by Margaret Laurence that has never before been published and two other stories that have not been widely available. They indicate the range of her concerns and show a marked departure from her fiction in The Tomorrow-Tamer and Other Stories and A Bird in the House.

Readers will benefit from the extensive research in this full and vibrant portrait of one of the most revered writers of twentieth-century Canadian literature.

Genres: Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was on its way to a 4 or 5 star rating...and then, for some inexplicable reason, it stops! How can you write a book about Margaret Laurence and NOT go beyond the mid-1960s? How can you ignore the impact of "The Stone Angel"? How can you ignore Margaret Laurence's transformation into one of the first generation of acclaimed modern Canadian Lit authors? How in the name of all that is holy do you write a Laurence work without any examination of her masterpiece, "The Diviners"? I was at a lost...something so well written, so thoughtful, so compelling...and it just stops! I have no words.

[Jennifer Hatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish this was the Margaret Laurence I had met in high school.
Then again, as an entitled teen I may not have appreciated her struggle to make sense of fear, to wade through grief, to balance demands of marriage and family and society's expectations against the burning need to write.
I certainly appreciate it now, and have a whole new level of respect for her, not only as an author, but as a person.
Richly detailed and researched, the book seems glossy at times - protecting the image of an icon or due to lack of written records, perhaps - but the insight into the amgst of a female writer's life amid the 195s obsession with 'family perfection' is tangible.
The inclusion of three original short stories is icing on the story.
I will be rereading The Stone Angel now, even though I vowed after my Grade 11 English exam never to touch it again.
One more lesson in Never Say Never.

[Elaine Cougler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Laurence: The Making of a Writer is a biography by Donez Xiques. I enjoyed it as Laurence was the first writer I read as an adult who really spoke to me. Xiques captures Laurence, I think, and has quite obviously done a lot of hard research as the book is in-depth and thorough. Her comments and interpretation of the facts show insight as well. At times the writer repeats herself making me think she wrote the book in sections and maybe could have revised a bit more. But, all in all, I quite enjoyed this brief look back at the amazing Laurence. The day she died was a sad one for me as I had always wanted to tell her in person how much her writing has touched my life.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written biography covering the early years of Margaret Laurence, a lot of which I had little or no knowledge of previously. It provided wonderful insight into the life of my favourite author and really explains in detail how much effort and time Margaret put into learning the craft of writing and the doubts and struggles she went through. Enjoyed everything about this book.