The Diviners

The Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974¹, it was Laurence's final novel, and the last in her five-volume Manawaka cycle. It is considered a classic of Canadian literature and won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1974. While the tone of the novel is spiritual and life-affirming, it also deals with issues of race, sexuality, class, poverty, and abortion, and contains strong language. As a result, challenges by religious and/or conservative groups have been constant, but these disputes galvanized authors, librarians, teachers, publishers, and booksellers to champion the book, and led to the formation of Freedom to Read Week.

The Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and the last in her five-volume Manawaka cycle. It is considered a classic of Canadian literature and won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1974. While the tone of the novel is spiritual and life-affirming, it also deals with issues of race, sexuality, class, poverty, and abortion, and contains strong language. As a result, challenges by religious and/or conservative groups have been constant, but these disputes galvanized authors, librarians, teachers, publishers, and booksellers to champion the book, and led to the formation of Freedom to Read Week.

Reception and legacy

In a Kirkus review from 1974, The Diviners is described as one of Laurence's "least effective novels," and "generally too crowded and warmed over." Other sources, focusing on the inclusion of Canadian "socio-cultural engagements", state that the novel is "widely considered to be Laurence's masterpiece, and one of the greatest Canadian novels ever written." A filmed adaptation of the book aired on CBC Television in 1993. The book is noted in a 1994 Globe and Mail article as "[c]ritically acclaimed but sexually explicit" alongside complaints from parents seeking to have the book banned from high schools in the Peterborough County Board of Education. Repeated mentions of the "salty language" and questionable content have followed the novel since its publication in 1974 through to the current time period. Yet, it is also praised for its acknowledgement of important social issue, including the after effects of colonialism, single motherhood, interracial relations, and the relationship between parent and child. More recent discussion of the novel liken its relevance in the 2000s to aging rather than being considered a dated work of literature.

See also

List of banned books

External links

Freedom to Read Campaign Archived CBC coverage regarding the banning of the book James King. The Life of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1997.

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