Book Review: Emily Climbs

[osprey_archer]

On and upward with Emily Byrd Starr as she ascends the Alpine path in Emily Climbs, the Alpine path being here of course not a literal mountain but Emily's road to literary success. In this book, Emily is off to Shrewsbury for high school - if she will promise her Aunt Elizabeth to give up writing while she's at school. "I can't promise that," Emily says, with the misery of despair, for she knows that Aunt Elizabeth won't be able to understand that it's not that Emily refuses, but that she simply knows she cannot keep that promise any more than she could promise to stop breathing.

Fortunately Cousin Jimmy intervenes, and Emily has only to promise to give up story-writing. ("Excellent," says her previous teacher Mr. Carpenter, who believes that this will help curb Emily's excesses.) Poems and diary entries remain fair game, and poems, therefore, are what Emily begins to send off to editors - to receive, at first, a steady stream of rejection slips.

Emotionally Emily's growth as a writer is one that any young (or indeed not-so-young) writer can relate to, but there's also a wealth of practical advice for a young writer circa 1925. Type your manuscripts if possible, at any rate only write on one side of the paper, a typed rejection is more personal (and thus more encouraging) than a printed one, etc. Montgomery is offering the budding young writers in her audience a how-to guide.

She is also, as usual, telling a cracking good story. This book has some of the best set-pieces in the whole trilogy, like the blizzard that forces Emily, Ilse, Teddy, and Perry to take shelter in an abandoned house overnight. Emily's eyes catch on Teddy's and she's shaken to her core by the sense that she's falling in love with him... only to forget about it entirely when a chance fancy of Teddy's sets off the idea for a story in Emily's head, and she lies awake all night working out A Seller of Dreams!

And then there's the bit where Emily and Ilse set off round the country to canvass for subscriptions, and get lost, and spend the night beneath the stars in a haystack. They lay awake a long time talking, then Ilse falls asleep, and Emily gazes up at the whole turning dome of the sky and the stars above her... Just beautiful, one of my favorite scenes in the trilogy. Montgomery is so good at capturing that feeling of being overwhelmed by the loveliness of an experience, which can be so hard to explain to anyone else.

Here also Emily's second sight makes another appearance: there's a missing child in the neighborhood, and in her sleep Emily arises and draws a picture of the abandoned house where the child has gotten himself trapped. Emily's appalled by the eeriness of the experience and begs Ilse not to mention it to anyone, which is such a real and human way to react, and would drive me up the wall in a fantasy novel, but it works here, perhaps because Emily's second sight is only one strand among many rather than the main driver of the plot.

(Still fascinated by the fact that L. M. Montgomery just blithely gave the heroine of her realistic novel psychic powers. Does anyone have a read on when an author could no longer get away with this? In the 1930s, Mary Grant Bruce in the Billabong series elaborates an entire theory about how telepathy is kind of like radio, actually.)

And finally, there's the wonderful scene where Emily meets fancy New York editor Miss Royal, who grew up on PEI and is visiting an aunt. Miss Royal brought along her beloved dog, Chu-Chin, whom Emily meets on the drive up to the aunt's house. Chu-Chin bounces into Miss Royal's aunt's house and proceeds to knock everything over while Emily attempts to interview a tight-lipped Miss Royal... only for it to turn out that Miss Royal thinks the dog is Emily's! Amazing. Incredible. Miss Royal begins the next chapter by laughing so hard she nearly falls over, and I always laugh too.

The dog misunderstanding cleared up, Miss Royal offers Emily the chance of a lifetime: come live with Miss Royal in New York City, and Miss Royal will introduce Emily around to her editor friends, and smooth Emily's ascent up the Alpine path! Emily tells herself that she yearns to go, but Aunt Elizabeth will never let her; is appalled when Aunt Elizabeth says she can decide for herself; attempts to convince herself that she's definitely going to take this chance of a lifetime; and then with great relief realizes that she wants to stay at New Moon. Miss Royal, appalled, tells her that she'll never develop as a writer if she stays in this poky little place, but Emily insists that she can study human nature here as well as in New York, and finishes the book once again committing herself to her chosen path: not only a writer, but a Canadian writer, chronicling the life of her own people on Prince Edward Island.

Next up: you may be surprised to learn that we are not going directly to Emily's Quest, but instead taking a detour to The Blue Castle. Perhaps Montgomery (like Emily when she conceives A Seller of Dreams) was simply so possessed by the idea of Valancy that she just had to put her trilogy aside for a bit to work the story out.

Comments

[sovay]

(Still fascinated by the fact that L. M. Montgomery just blithely gave the heroine of her realistic novel psychic powers. Does anyone have a read on when an author could no longer get away with this? In the 1930s, Mary Grant Bruce in the Billabong series elaborates an entire theory about how telepathy is kind of like radio, actually.)

Sayers' Murder Must Advertise (1933) has an apparent drug-induced flash of telepathy on the part of one of the antagonists, when she perceives a hanged man inside Wimsey's thoughts: he is pursuing her as a lead on a murder investigation.

I have almost certainly mentioned it before, but the title of Margery Allingham's The Mind Readers (1965) absolutely means. It feels to me more of a piece with the parapsychology of the 1960's, however, than any kind of holdover from Montgomery's period.

Perhaps Montgomery (like Emily when she conceives A Seller of Dreams) was simply so possessed by the idea of Valancy that she just had to put her trilogy aside for a bit to work the story out.

I believe it was actually in conversation with you however many aaagh seven years ago that the likeness between Barney Snaith and Dean Priest clicked into focus for me, after which it made a lot of sense to find out that Montgomery had written The Blue Castle while stalled on Emily's Quest: I had wondered if it was an accident of personal archetype, but in context of the timeline feels a lot more like a kind of self-AU.

[landofnowhere]

I remember really liking this one!

only for it to turn out that Miss Royal thinks the dog is Emily's!

I'm confused -- why would Miss Royal think her own beloved dog is Emily's? Wouldn't she recognize it? But that is a very LMM sort of episode :-)

[littlerhymes]

Emily actually agreeing to give up story writing is one of the bravest things she ever did tbh. Let the girl write! Maybe the excess bottled up fiction manifested itself as psychic powers - actually that reminds me of Roald Dahl's Matilda, which is far outside the date range in question, but which basically does just that. Of course the counterargument is Billabong since I cannot imagine Norah writing a poem at all.

[nnozomi]

Emily's appalled by the eeriness of the experience and begs Ilse not to mention it to anyone, which is such a real and human way to react, and would drive me up the wall in a fantasy novel, but it works here
This reminds me of Titty Walker's unnerved reaction to her ability to dowse in Pigeon Post. I've never been sure whether to class that as psychic powers or not... .

[genarti]

Dorothy Gilman has the realistic novel with sudden telepathy in several of her books -- I remember it most dramatically in Caravan (1992), where there's a pivotal moment when the heroine breaks a pot with her mind in an extreme of desperation, but it's there in several Mrs. Pollifax books too. But it startled me to read in the 1990s, and she started publishing in the 1970s, so maybe she got away with it a bit longer than many because she'd started in an era where people did that kind of thing more...?