The Diviners

[bibliogramma]

I recently re-read one of my favourite novels, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners. I'm far from being the only one who thinks of this book as a masterpiece - its place in the CanLit canon is firmly established. And every time I re-read it, I see another facet of the book more clearly. And I'm even more daunted by the complexity of the novel, its structures and its themes.

The time and place in which the protagonist - Morag - is situated makes it possible for The Diviners to address so many different social issues: feminism, classism, racism, colonialism. Morag's life choices allow us to follow her on so many paths: the child coming to terms with a low-caste, working class background, the woman freeing herself from society's expectations of what it means to be a woman and a sexual being, the lover trying - and never quite succeeding - to find a bridge that will cross the divide of racism and colonialism to understand the life that her Metis lover and their child must deal with, the writer struggling to find her voice...

And at the same time, the structure of the novel makes us think about the differences between history, myth and fiction, and the similarities, and how perspective can alter all of them. As we read/hear the narratives of the past worked into the novel, from the perspectives of the rebellious Metis with Louis Riel, from the early Scottish settlers, from the cultural authorities of school and government, we learn to ask - whose history is right, if any history can be right, can see the event from all viewpoints, can understand its meaning to all participants.

It's a difficult, even demanding book, for those who want to understand as much as one can of all that Laurence puts into this work, but it's a delight for me to see this wonderful tapestry and try to tease out a few more threads each time I read it. I don't know if I will ever grok it completely, but that's part of the delight.