Margaret Laurence was a great Canadian fiction writer. Born in Neepawa, Manitoba in 1926, she spent her childhood without her parents and was raised by her aunt. She is best known for her Manawaka novels, "The Stone Angel," "A Jest of God," "The Fire Dwellers," and "The Diviners," all of which are considered classics of Canadian literature. "A Bird in the House" is a selection of some of Laurence's best fiction. It's a series of eight interconnected short stories narrated by Vanessa MacLeod as she matures from a child at age ten into a young woman at age twenty. Wise for her years, Vanessa reveals much about the adult world in which she lives. "A Bird in the House" achieves the breadth of scope which is usually associated with novels, but at the same time, Laurence uses the techniques of short story writing. In "Loons," Margaret Laurence successfully describes the alienation felt by the young Piquette Tonnerre, who represent an ethnic group rejected by a cruel society, due to the fact that they are different. Piquette, a half breed, "neither Cree nor French," is forced to grow up in this cruel and cold society (197).
             When describing Piquette's status, Laurence allows the reader to understand how the society of the time perceived them: "The tonnerres were French half breeds, and among themselves they spoke a patois that was neither Cree nor French. Their English was broken and full of obscenities. They were, as... Grandmother Macleod would have put it, neither flesh, fowl, nor good salt herring" (197). Grandmother Macleod will refuse to join the whole family in one of their trips, simply because ill piquette will also go, "Piquette had the tuberculosis of the bone" (197). "Ewen, if that half- breed youngster comes along to the diamond lake, I'm not going" (198). Her grandmother behavior was rude to her.
             Although the tone of the story is predominantly sad, a first humorous moment is when the doctor (Vanessa's father) chooses pique...