I think it’s quite fun to find books left behind by previous guests when visiting cottages and inns or the like. I read these dog-eared editions during our stays and imagine who left them behind. Improvised bookmarks hint at the previous reader’s characteristics or lifestyle.  A grocery list, a store receipt, the glossy corner of a magazine page.

The ultimate discovery is a book with notes in the margins. It’s like passing secret messages in class.

Such a book recently entered my life, not while travelling, but rather via a used bookstore in my community. Their copy of The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence caught my attention. Over the years, I’d seen her name listed among the literary greats and The Stone Angel was a title highly spoken of. So, I bought it.

At home, I discovered a name written inside the front cover in blue ink. Sylvie Tissandier.  I suspect she read the book as a student. She must have used a ruler (I’m picturing the clear plastic type found in geometry kits) to so neatly underline sentences pertaining mostly to theme and character. Pages in the last quarter of the book are coffee stained. Maybe a spill before rushing to class or during lively conversation with friends?

I felt an immediate connection to Sylvie because I’m also a person who makes notes in books as I read. But my underlining is more of a freehand squiggle. I’ve developed my own shorthand, a set of codes with which I label phrases. BL for beautiful line. FB for flashback, that sort of thing.

Our notes are interesting to see in tandem. She read as a student of reading and I as a student of writing craft.

Someday, when I’m gone, my children will sort through my book collection. I wonder what they’ll conclude about who I’ve been deep down, beneath the mantle of mother.  

They’ll read my pencil notes in the narrow white margins.

When I underscore a line and write BL, are the lines or ideas universally beautiful, or are they just beautiful to me? Have any long-forgotten notes betrayed me?

Maybe they’ll say to each other, “This all confirms what we thought to be true about her.”

My children and I discuss deep topics. They know much about me, but we all have a past and an inner life. How well can we know anyone? At sixty, I’m still getting to know myself. 

The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar, a 90-year-old woman born in the late 1800s. Her mother died giving birth to her and she was left with brothers and an overbearing father who sent her for higher education. Afterward, he kept her on a shelf away from the world and gruff men. He wouldn’t allow her to work in the family store and assigned her bookkeeping work, to be done safely at home. As a young woman, Hagar rebelled by marrying a gruff man who demanded none of the cultured behaviour her father insisted on. This love seemed like freedom but over the years became a cage, and Hagar grows to resent her husband’s lack of refinement. Her bitterness festers and spills onto her children, causing them great difficulties. As Hagar ages, she must come to terms with her changing life, and the impact of her negativity.  

There I was (in 2025), reading this book (originally published in 1964) in which a woman shares her internal thoughts about her life. And I’m reading it along with Sylvie who read it years earlier (possibly around 1988 when this edition was released). I made notes about how The Stone Angel resonates with me and what it means to me, things I want to remember.

At the end of this particular edition, I was equally moved—as a writer—by the afterword from Adele Wiseman, a Canadian writer friend of Margaret Laurence.

In the early 1960s, before this book was published, the two authors corresponded by handwritten letters. Margaret wrote about her insecurity while writing The Stone Angel. She thought it was flat, and at one point, she considered abandoning the novel.

She later wrote, “…I think that this process (i.e. of getting to trust your own judgment & to attempt honestly to write what you feel & not what you’re supposed to feel)”

This I’ve come to realize myself over the past few years. A lump still rises in my throat when I read those words.

Someday, my copy of The Stone Angel will reenter the larger stream of books again. Before I set it free, I plan to paste a copy of this post inside the back cover. I hope a future reader will read along with Sylvie and me.

*The feature image is a painting by F.H.Varley entitled “Character Study-Mrs. Surrey”, c. 1937