The Life of Margaret Laurence

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

This biography of Canada’s most-admired novelist is no hagiography,
despite the author’s justifiably high opinion of Laurence’s work.
King deals at length with her suicide and her drinking problem, aspects
of her life that the popular press blew out of all proportion when his
biography was first published. He notes perceptively that drinking
allowed her access to her deepest feelings and thus fed her writing.

For sources, King relies heavily on Laurence’s correspondence,
especially her letters to her close friend Adele Wiseman (also a
writer). The anxieties central to her personality were nurtured, King
repeatedly suggests, by the loss of both parents when Laurence was a
young child. Anxiety fed on the loneliness that clung to her after the
breakup of her marriage.

King structures the life in three parts, respectively titled
“Peggy,” “Margaret,” and “Margaret Laurence.” These variants
of her name represent, in order, her childhood in Neepawa, Manitoba; her
early adult years with Jack Laurence and their two young children in
Africa and England; and her last two decades, which she spent alone and
in poor health. As Laurence’s writing shows, she identified with the
suffering of others, but could also rejoice deeply.

King fails to emphasize the strong strain of joy in Laurence’s life
and work. And his sources, while significant, fail to include some of
the writer’s closest friends. Laurence’s importance as a writer
means that other biographies will follow in years to come, but King’s
is first in the field and will be of great interest.

Black-and-white photographs are interspersed throughout the text.
Laurence’s personal favorite graces the cover.