Book Review: The Story Girl

[osprey_archer]

On PEI, I picked up a couple of facts about The Story Girl. First, the blue chest in the book - Rachel Ward’s wedding chest, locked and abandoned after she was jilted at the altar - is a real chest, which resides in the Anne of Green Gables Museum, which is still owned by Montgomery’s wider family connection. Second, this was L. M. Montgomery’s favorite of her own books.

The second fact rather flabbergasted me, as I’ve read this book before and was not greatly impressed. This time around, I enjoyed it more, because I knew what to expect and could therefore enjoy what it has to offer rather than hankering over what it has not: that is to say, any kind of plot or forward motion.

Except for the Story Girl herself, a vivid tale-spinning wood nymph of a girl (always appearing with scarlet leaves or berries crowning her nut-brown hair), the characters are fairly forgettable, as are many of their adventures - although there is an excellent sequence where they become convinced that tomorrow is Judgment Day, and spend twenty-four hours in fear and trembling. But our ostensible main characters are not the point; they are merely a string on which to hang, like beads, the Story Girl’s stories, a mixture of mythology and fairy tale and Prince Edward Island lore.

I found the book much more enjoyable when I went into it knowing that it was a few dozen short stories dressed up in a trenchcoat to look like a novel. Still a little puzzled as to why it was L. M. Montgomery’s favorite, but who can understand the mysterious ways of authors! Maybe it was just the most fun to write.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Or maybe she had a strong sense of identification with the Story Girl. That's how I felt about Eepersip from The House Without Windows, which I know left you (and IIRC rachelmanija? cold. ... Not that I wrote that book of course.

Or yeah--maybe it was just fun to write.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, that's definitely one plausible explanation. Did L. M. Montgomery regale her RL friends & family with stories? (I think telling stories out loud & in written form are quite different talents, often.) Oh, dear, I see an L. M. Montgomery biography in my future somewhere...

You first read The House Without Windows as a child, right? I do think there are some children's books you have to read as a kid in order to fully inhabit them, and that might be one of them, especially since Follett herself was so young when she wrote it.

[asakiyume]

Yes! I read it at 11--which was the age of Eepersip in the story, I think? So that added to it.

And yes: I agree that some stories really need to be read when you're young. And also I agree re: oral storytelling and written storymaking! Surprisingly different.

[osprey_archer]

She's definitely around that age! Which would make her older than Follett was when she wrote it, IIRC. (But of course at that age, writing a character slightly older than you are feels so glamorous!)

[asakiyume]

Yes, when she started writing, she was nine. However, I think by the time she was done and had revised it, she was somewhat older (not sure if she hd reached the venerable age of eleven yet though).

[kore]

I also think LMM may have self-identified with the Story Girl (altho she was much more upfront about the connection between herself and Emily). She was indeed a very good storyteller and was locally famous for her recitations and dramatic readings, and she did a lot of work with local drama clubs, and also went on speaking tours after she was a famous author. She definitely knew how to perform for others, as well as write for herself.

I've read a number of biographies and I think the best was also the most recent IIRC -- Lucy Maud Montgomery: the gift of wings, by Mary Rubio (2008), who also co-edited her Journals. There's also The Wheel of Things by Mollie Gillen (1975), which is pretty good.

[osprey_archer]

I thought that if I asked about a biography, you might know the answer! I see that Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings is at my library, too... calling for me... dangerous...

[kore]

Aww!....yeah, that is courtesy of my tendency to fixate on an author and chew through whatever I can find, lol. Her later life was quite dark and her husband and eldest son were a total drag on her. I sometimes wonder what her life might have been like if she hadn't been married.

[osprey_archer]

Have you read her diaries, too? I've been tempted sometimes but I've heard the later volumes are almost unreadably bleak.

[kore]

Oh yeah, I gobbled those up after I read the Rubio biography, so probably sometime in the late 00s -- which I guess is LIKE FIFTEEN YEARS AGO NOW?? hang me up on the wall in a bag, ugh. Anyway, those were the Selected Journals, in five volumes, in a very nice edition. Now, however, there are the Complete Journals, which look amazing but terribly dear: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Journals-L-M-Montgomery-1889-1900/dp/019900210X

The first edition of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery was published in the 1980s, with fifty percent of the material removed to save space, as well as to reflect a quaint, marketable vision of small-town Canada. The editors were instructed to excise anything that was not upbeat or did not "move the story along." The resulting account of Montgomery's youthful life in Prince Edward Island depicts a fun-loving, simple country girl. The unabridged journal, however, reveals something quite different.

We now know that Montgomery was anything but simple. She was often anxious, bitter, dark, and political, although always able to see herself and her surroundings with a deep ironic - and often comical - twist. The unabridged version shows her using writing as a means of managing her own mood swings, as well as her increasing dependency on journal keeping, and her ambition as a writer. She was also exceedingly interested in men. We see here a more developed portrait of what she herself described as a "very uncomfortable blend" between "the passionate Montgomery blood and the Puritan Macneill conscience." Full details describe the impassioned events during which she describes becoming a "new creature," "born of sorrow and hopeless longing."

In addition, this unedited account is a striking visual record, containing some 500 of her own photographs placed as she placed them in her journals, as well as newspaper clippings, postcards, and professional portraits, all with her own original captions. New notes and a new introduction give key context to the history, the people, and the culture in the text. A new preface by Michael Bliss draws some unexpected connections.

The full PEI journals tells a fascinating tale of a young woman coming of age in a bygone rural Canada, a tale far thornier and far more compelling than the first selected edition could disclose.

(partly from https://lmmonline.org/the-complete-journals-of-lm-montgomery-1889-1900/)

WELL then. -- It's neat that they were able to put the photos and clippings back in -- she treated her Journals as a kind of memory book. And she also carefully drafted entries, sometimes years later than the events she was writing up, and then revised those for publication -- she was always clear she wanted them published after her death. I'm not so sure about the last volume tho. But IIRC she wrote that one up too. (Anais Nin did the same thing with her diaries -- carefully revising and often censoring the original manuscripts.

[kore]

MAN, I LOVE THE LMM ONLINE SITE BUT IT'S A DANGEROUS PLACE FOR ME.

Montgomery, L.M. The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript. Edited by Carolyn Strom Collins. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, forthcoming in 2024.

//cries

[osprey_archer]

Ahahaha this site is aimed directly at your personal pocketbook.

[kore]

Also, 2013 was ten years ago? Can that be true??

[osprey_archer]

I keep being stunned by realizations of this sort. I'm not sure if it's that I'm getting old or if it's because Covid has somehow accordioned my sense of time so things feel much more recent than they actually were... or sometimes longer ago, if they happened during Covid.

[rachelmanija]

Never read it but I have to say that I have an immediate dislike of the name Eepersip.

[asakiyume]

LOL; understandable.

[skygiants]

I actually also loved this one and its sequel growing up and read it way more often than Anne, for whatever reason. I liked that they were more of an ensemble story and the kids were constantly bouncing into each other in various ways, like a more poetic Peanuts gang.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, interesting! Yes, I can see the Peanuts gang aspect, now that you mention it.

[skygiants]

Felicity especially has a kind of Lucy van Pelt-ish aspect to her to me - beautiful mean girl & designated casual antagonist but We Do Love Her Anyway, she's part of the friends-group!

[osprey_archer]

Deep down she really does love the Story Girl as much as everyone else!