L M Montgomery

Why have I never read anything by Lucy Maud Montgomery before? Of course I'd heard of Anne of Green Gables, but, though a great lover of classic childrens' literature both when I was the right age for it and ever since, LMM never made her way onto my radar. So I was pleased and curious when Virago kindly sent me a couple of her novels, just reprinted and with very attractive covers. I whizzed through them both in no time, and with huge enjoyment.

Jane of Lantern Hill, a late novel as it was published in 1937, was certainly my favorite of the two. It's a totally delightful story. When it starts, Jane, aged eleven, lives with her mother and grandmother in a grand house in Toronto. The house is in a road called Gay Street, a misnomer if ever there was one. The street is gloomy, and the house is gloomier still. Jane's mother is a pretty socialite, given to tinkling laughs, though Jane often suspects there's a sadness underneath. She adores Jane, but the two of them are completely under the thumb of Jane's grandmother, a monstrous woman who clearly hates Jane and loses no opportunity of letting her know. As for Jane's father, he is never mentioned and she has always thought he was dead. Then all of a sudden a letter comes, much to her grandmother's fury -- he is well alive, and wants her to spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island. Jane doesn't want to go -- but of course she does, and of course it completely transforms her life.

Really this is pure innocent fun, though I did sometimes wonder what a child of today would make of the way Jane throws herself so wholeheartedly into a domestic role, cooking and cleaning for her father like a little substitute wife. But she has such a good time in the glorious countryside too, running wild with all sorts of lovely friends who her grandmother would be horrified by. And throughout her stay there, and after her return home, there are puzzles and anxieties to be grappled with -- why did her parents split up? is her father planning to remarry? Of course everything turns out wonderfully well in the end and I'm sure everyone will live happily ever after.

The other Virago reprint is Rilla of Ingleside, an earlier, darker, and I thought stranger, novel. It was published in 1921, but the events it describes take place during WW1. Here I felt rather at a disadvantage because the eponymous Rilla is the daughter of Anne of Green Gables, and all the characters would have been familiar to lovers of that series but were not so to me. For this reason I found it a little hard to get my head round them all, and their relationships to each other. Also, the events of the war play a large part, as everybody in the house is following it through the newspapers on a daily basis, something which becomes more crucial as two of Rilla's brothers, Jem and Walter, go off to fight. This strand of the story is actually quite fascinating, and there's a tremendous amout of insight into the attitudes of Canadians into a war so far away which nevertheless concerns them deeply. In fact, according to Wikipedia, this is the only Canadian novel written from a woman's perspective about the First World War by a contemporary -- amazing, and worth reading for that alone.

But in the end this is Rilla's story. She's fifteen when the novel begins, and on the very verge of becoming an adult. There's a young man she likes very much indeed, but she's not at all sure whether he really likes her. She doesn't really do much with her life, just potters on enjoying school and friendships and dances. But of course everything changes, not only because the boys start going to war, but also because -- an amazing development, this -- she adopts a baby whose mother has died. Rilla hates babies, but when she finds this one in very upsetting circumstances, she brings it home and dutifully mothers it. Of course, over the coming years, as the sickly, scrawny infant turns into a gorgeous and adorable little boy, Rilla comes to love him very much indeed. 

So this is a coming of age story with a vengeance, as we see Rilla turning from a pretty thoughtless child into a serious and responsible young woman. There are tragedies along the way, and the family at Ingleside will never be quite the same again, but there'll be happiness for Rilla, we hope, as things in the end turn out just as she had wished they would.

What's so good about both these novels is the way that LMM is not afraid to deal with quite serious and upsetting issues, while still managing to leave the reader in the end with a sense of pure enjoyment.  

I've been reading a bit about LMM, and now I want to know a lot more about her, and her obviously sad and difficult life, and of course to read more of her novels.  So many thanks to Virago, and of course highly recommended.