A Jest of God (Margaret Laurence)

"I do not know how many bones need be broken before I can walk. And I do not know, either, how many need not have been broken at all."

I've had A Jest of God on my bookshelf for almost three years, but until today I had never read it. It's a relatively short novel of about two-hundred pages, but its emotional depth is profound. Rachel Cameron is an elementary school teacher in her mid thirties who is single and still living with her ailing mother in the apartment (above a funeral home) that she grew up in. 

Rachel suffers from anxiety, insecurity and what can only be described as low self-esteem. She constantly apologizes to others and to herself for everything she says and for every action. Even as she has sex for the first time, she's saying "I'm sorry."  She is afraid of people--of doing the wrong things when she interacts with people. 

Early on in the novel, Rachel speaks with the principal at her school, and I was struck by these lines: "I know I must not stand up now, not until he's gone. I am exceptionally tall for a woman and Willard is shorter than I." 

Her insecurity over her height immediately drew me to her and allowed me to like her. I empathized with Rachel through every awkward moment she experienced talking to her co-workers, feeling trapped and claustrophobic in a crowded church, and her inability to relax while making love to the first man that had entered her life in years. 

A Jest of God is, in many ways, a painful novel to read, but the ending was rewarding. As G.D Killam writes in the introduction to my New Canadian Library Edition, "Margaret Laurence's fiction is about . . . the individual coming to terms with his own past and himself, accepting his limitations and going on from there, however terrified he may be." Rachel is able to, in the end,  face her own past and limitations, and begin to overcome them and move on with her life.

I look forward to reading more of Margaret Laurence's work.