Classic tale of a mid-life crisis

PAPERBACK

TApollo, £10

HE latest in a series of reissues by Apollo of the great Canadian author’s novels is her 1969 classic The Fire-Dwellers.

It has come to be seen as one of Laurence’s lesser books, a verdict which seems increasingly ill-founded the deeper one gets into this stunning portrait of a dissatisfied housewife and mother in 1960s Canada.

Stacey MacAindra, far from being a relic of a rapidly receding decade, springs to life from the moment the book is opened, as real and relevant as a reader could want.

Switching between third-person narration and Stacey’s inner thoughts, Laurence forensically probes the most uncomfortable areas of an unfulfilled life and a crumbling relationship.

Having moved from the prairie town of Manawaka to the big city as a girl, Stacey is now 39 years old, with four children ranging in age from two to 15.

Her salesman husband Mac has just got a job with a firm peddling vitamin supplements and works long hours, often not coming home till midnight. Their marriage is becoming defined by short tempers and long silences.

Stacey reads far too many magazine articles of the “Are you ruining your children?” variety, and has to bear the brunt of Mac’s complaints that their boys will turn out soft if she keeps indulging them.

(The unspoken implication is that once they’re grown up Mac will take all the credit for their good points and Stacey will be blamed for their flaws.) Buckling under the huge responsibilities of motherhood, Stacey anaesthetises herself with gin and fantasises about freer, more exciting lives where her soul isn’t daily being crushed.

She longs for some kind of escape or relief, and a chance encounter with a younger man hints at possibilities that might just be within her reach.

All the while, through the television, the outside world of Vietnam and civil unrest beats insistently on the screen, threatening to burst into her home.

From what we see of her social circle, it’s obvious that she and her friends are all caught in the same trap, clutching at make-up, clothes and weekly visits to the hairdresser to conform to an idealised version of womanhood.

At a cosmetic sales party, Stacey fleetingly wonders if the others are, like her, berating themselves for being weak-willed enough to go along with the charade, but these are thoughts that can’t be spoken out loud for fear of being ostracised or, alternatively, bringing down the whole house of cards.

And yet, however bleak Stacey’s plight seems, Laurence permits a few tender moments along the way when she and Mac do at least attempt to address the problems in their marriage, struggling together against the tidal forces that seem set to pull them apart.

This perceptive and compassionate portrayal of a woman’s mid-life crisis, and how she and her family deal with it, is a gem, and hopefully its republication will bring it out from the shadows cast by Laurence’s more celebrated work.