Alien Heart: The Life and Work of Margaret Laurence

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

First, a mystery. In 1997, James King published The Life of Margaret
Laurence, a substantial, detailed, professionally researched biography.
Yet here in Alien Heart, an even more substantial and comprehensively
researched book, no mention of King’s work appears either in the text
or in the seemingly complete bibliography. There must be an untold story
behind this conspicuous omission, which is disturbing and seems
unscholarly. It is also a pity since the biographies are very different,
and in many respects complement (rather than clash with) each other.

King’s is an arm’s-length biography. In contrast, Lyall Powers
first met Laurence while they were both students at United College, now
the University of Winnipeg, and they remained friends throughout the
novelist’s life. His book manages, successfully, to combine detached
biography with personal memoir. Moreover, the two biographies emphasize
different aspects of her life. Powers lays more stress on, and devotes
more attention to, her religious and sociopolitical concerns. Even their
views on her strengths as a novelist differ. For Powers, The Diviners is
a culminating triumph; for King—far more accurately, in my view—it
contains “glaring faults” and can at best be seen as a “failed
masterpiece.”

Anyone who wants to acquire the main facts about Laurence’s life will
find them here. The book is clearly written, highly readable, and
engagingly illustrated. Whether either biography assists in a greater
appreciation of the novels is, however, debatable. The “real”
Margaret Laurence appears to have been closer to the artistically
uncertain, emotionally confused, almost hit-or-miss Morag Gunn of The
Diviners than some of us might wish. But her story is absorbing,
alternating between the triumphant and the saddening, and Powers tells
it effectively.

I must, however, record one final, niggling irritant. In the very first
scholarly note—and in the index—Northrop Frye’s name is
misspelled. Surely a Canadian university press issuing the biography of
a Canadian writer should do better than that.