The L. M. Montgomery Tag

This fun tag is part of Hamlette's We Love L. M. Montgomery Week. ♥

1. Who introduced you to L. M. Montgomery's writing?  Tell us the story!

I honestly think it was me. I grew up with the Megan Follows miniseries so when I reached my late teens I just decided to try some of her Anne books. I'm not sure when I first saw the miniseries, only that it's always been there, just like the Road to Avonlea miniseries that I adore.

2. What LMM books have you read?

I have an awful confession. I know that I've read some of the Anne books when I was a teenager, but I have no idea which ones or how far into the series I got. But I read at least 3 and I have also, now, read Emily of New Moon.

3. What movies or shows based on her books have you watched?

I swear someone showed me something about Jane of Lantern  Hill at some point, although I might be misremembering. I've also watched the classic Anne series with Megan Follows, all 3 of them. I've seen a few other Anne movies along the way and, yes, I did watch 2 seasons of Anne with an E although I cannot recommend it other than the first season which I found rather brilliant.

Read More

We ♥ L. M. Montgomery Week - Emily of New Moon (a review)

Emily of New Moon was read for Hamlette's We Love L. M. Montgomery Week. ♥

This was my first time reading Montgomery's Emily of New Moon. It's incredible how fast I read it. It was hard to put it down when I had to do other things, like, oh work or sleep or go run errands. It's a very enchanting, melancholy sort of story, and I was completely pulled into it.

Creative souls are hard to come by sometimes and Emily Byrd Starr is, if at all possible, even more creative and imaginative than Anne Shirley. She's a wild thing, born of the fey, on so many levels.

For the unfamiliar, like I was, Emily is orphaned early in the book and, through no other alternative, goes to live with her mother's family. She was raised wild by a father much like herself in personality, and her mother's family despised him. So it's a struggle for her, going to live with an aged aunt who appears to find her troublesome at best and hateful at worst. Aunt Elizabeth Murray is the matriarch of New Moon farm. Aunt Laura is the sweeter, meeker younger sister, and Cousin Jimmy is kind, but also appears to have some sort of interesting mental defect that might make him slightly dangerous. Or at least, there are times when Emily feels slightly fearful of him, although she's not entirely sure why.

I won't go in depth into the darker side of the book here, or the elements that troubled me, but it's impossible to read Emily of New Moon without realizing and appreciating that Montgomery herself must have felt things very, very keenly. I looked a bit into her life, not much, but just a bit, and realized she was much like her heroines in a variety of ways. I had no idea that her use of "the flash" for Emily's brilliant and spiritual inspirations came from her own experiences with it.

Read More