THE STONE ANGEL (Margaret Laurence) - September 5/07

This was a really well-written and extremely dense book revolving around a nasty old woman who, in the course of reflecting on her life, comes to the realization that she's been far too closed-off and mean. I wound up reading about half of the book before I saw the movie, which strangely enough didn't ruin the latter half of the novel. I did find it odd, however, that the film invented a far more conventional final confrontation between Hagar and her son Marvin (it actually got me a little choked up), but in the book said confrontation was far more low-key and in keeping with Hagar's hands-off nature. *** out of ****