House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery by Liz Rosenberg, 339 pages.
A reading challenge I'm participating in includes a task to read a biography of an author you admire. On seeing someone recommend this book I realized that, despite having read Anne of Green Gables *a lot* of times, I didn't know anything at all about the author.
This is a really effective biography. It follows Lucy Maud Montgomery (who usually just went by Maud) from the time she was born to her tragic death. Rosenberg draws heavily on Montgomery's own journals and letters, but also other archival sources, which prove useful for when Montgomery is either not seeing her own life very clearly or is unwilling to admit to difficult truths. Montgomery's story is often sort of beautiful and hopeful, and many of the nicer and more uplifting aspects of it went into her novels (I had not realized how many things in the Anne books are at least semi-biographical). The biography, much like her own books, is also an interesting look into life at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. It's also often quite sad. Maud suffered a lot of terrible things, both internally and externally, and it can be hard to read how much everything fell apart for her in the later years of her life. I would definitely recommend this book to fans of L. M. Montgomery, but don't expect a very happy story.
No comments:
Post a Comment