Once Upon a Bookshelf

I’ve almost read all of L.M. Montgomery’s short story books! Only two more to go - Christmas with Anne (which is sitting on my bookshelf waiting patiently for December to come along), and At the Altar, which I’m waiting to find on BookMooch. This is very exciting for me. It’s also exciting that this is my tenth book for the Canadian Book Challenge, which means I’m almost done that as well.

For the most part, this collection of short stories included stories where the protagonists met someone important in their lives after a long separation - whether due to a family feud, a lovers quarrel, or because one of the characters moved away. And for the most part, these stories were adorable and completely heart-warming.

As always, there are ones that stood out to me more than others - in this case it was Between the Hill and the Valley and Elizabeth’s Child.

In Elizabeth’s Child, Elizabeth had married a man whom her family did not approve of, and moved out west. One of her brothers, Paul, took it extremely hard, and refused to talk to Elizabeth, or even acknowledge the fact that Elizabeth was his sister. Many years have past, and now Elizabeth’s husband is dead, and she is not doing too well financially. When Elizabeth’s daughter, Worth, now in her teens, visits the rest of Elizabeth’s siblings, she and Paul strike up an unlikely friendship. Worth, manages to win his heart, and because he can’t bear the thought of Worth going back to her mother and never seeing her again, he invites the sister he refused to speak to back home to live with him, where he would be able to provide for her whole family.

Between the Hill and the Valley is the story of a man, Jeff, who has been in love with Sara most of his life. He always thought he was unworthy of her, so didn’t mention anything to her until after her father has died and he has discovered that Sara will have to move away. I think the reason I enjoyed this story so much is because in Jeff, I found a kindred spirit. There is always a joy in finding that one sentence in a book that really speaks to you, that describes you perfectly, that you can completely relate to, even if it was written about another character. And Montgomery always has a way of phrasing things that make them seem like they were written just for you.

They pitied him for the lonely life he must lead alone there at the Valley Farm, with only a deaf old housekeeper as a companion, for it did not occur to the Bayside people in general that a couple of shaggy dogs could be called companions, and they did not know that books make very excellent comrades for people who know how to treat them.

“… books make very excellent comrades for people who know how to treat them.” Ah yes, that spoke volumes to me, and that sentence alone made this a wonderful collection of stories. (Isn’t it wonderful when you find a little gem like that?)

This is my fifth book for the Canadian Book Challenge, and I have to say that this is one of the more enjoyable of Montgomery’s short story collections, in my opinion. It almost seems more Montgomery-ish than other collections, since all the stories take place close to a large body of water. And while they all had different aspects of the sea, it was almost as if you could smell the sea permeating from the pages of each story while reading it.

As to be expected from her short story collections, there were stories that had aspects that were oh-so-familiar to an Anne fan. “The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse” was rewritten into Anne’s House of Dreams, and Uncle Jesse is renamed to Uncle Jim. The story was as heartbreaking here as it was in House of Dreams.

“A Soul That Was Not at Home” was the story of a boy named Paul who told stories of the rock people. While he is not quite the same Paul from Anne of Avonlea, his stories of the rock people are. In this version of the story, Paul is an orphan who has the opportunity to be adopted by a rich woman, except that would mean he would have to leave the sea and his rock people.

Lastly, “Four Winds” tells the story of a minister who is in love with Lynde Oliver… and Lynde happens to be in a situation very similar to Leslie Moore in Anne’s House of Dreams. (Don’t want to spoil it for those who don’t know.) Mind you, she also has a very Emily-ish episode where she has to be rescued because she fell over the cliff trying to gather flowers.

I don’t think there was a story in here I didn’t enjoy. Even “The Waking of Helen”, whose ending was so unexpected was thoroughly enjoyable.

Against The Odds is my third book for the Canadian Book Challenge (and probably my first of two or three LMM books for said challenge). I hate to say it, but this really was my least favourite of Montgomery’s short story books that I’ve read thus far. It wasn’t that it was bad - some of the stories I enjoyed, some of them gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling, but none of them really stood out. Thinking back on those which were in the book, I only remember what a few of them were about. Overall, this book did very little for me, sadly.

That said, of the few that I still actually remember, one of them made me give a little squeal. How We Went to the Wedding was the longest in the collection, I think, and it dragged. Not much happened in all honesty - two girls set out to go to a wedding in the wettest fall Saskatchewan had seen in a long time. They had to avoid lakes where lakes should not have been, their guide disappeared on them, and I thought the story would never end until Mrs. Matilda Pitman appeared. And oh, all was wonderful all of a sudden, because I realized that this was the first appearance of a much-loved character from Rilla of Ingleside. The chapter in Rilla is practically the same as the bit of How We Went to the Wedding where Mrs. Matilda Pitman appeared, but that made it more enjoyable and will make my next re-read of Rilla be more entertaining as I’ll have a bit more background to that part of the story (in that I knew where Montgomery got that part from).

Other than that brief moment of squeeage, however, this book didn’t do much more me. Alas. Hopefully I’ll enjoy the rest of the short story books better, and that this is just a fluke.

This collection was edited by Rea Wilmshurst. Apparantely, all of these stories are all more of the darker side of Montgomery’s writing, and aside from a couple of chapters in her well-loved books I would totally agree with that. However, all in all they were definitely more charming than creepy (especially compared to my other RIP reads). They do have elements of RIP-challenge-worthy stuff: ghosts, witches, murderers… but they also had amusing drunks, cute love stories, and whatnot, so it’s a little all over the place. And nothing is really truly scary, as to be expected from Montgomery.

There were a few stories in particular, though, that were very gothic in feeling, and you can see how earlier gothic writers influenced her. The one that sticks out the most in my mind is Some Fools and a Saint. In this story, a new pastor comes to a small town and is boarding in a house that all the locals say is haunted. You can hear a cradle rocking when it isn’t, a violin is heard playing in different places in the house, curses written in blood are sent to the inhabitants of the house. The pastor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and I have to say that the ending quite surprised me. It reminded me a little of The Thirteenth Tale and the like.

And, typical to Mongomery, there were phrases, sentences, paragraphs that were just so … true and right.

It was a rainy afternoon, and we had been passing the time by telling ghost stories. That is a very good sort of thing for a rainy afternoon, and it is a much better time than after night. If you tell ghost stories after dark they are apt to make you nervous, whether you own up to it or not, and you sneak home and dodge upstairs in mortal terror, and undress with your back to the wall, so that you can’t fancy there is anything behind you.

Overall, I thoroughly and completely enjoyed this. It wasn’t my favourite of her short story books, but it was charming and a nice, light read.

I was a little bit skeptical about this book when it was first released. It all goes back to my dislike of short stories - I like stories with a lot of character development, and I don’t always get enough of that in short stories. I have to admit that I was also a little bit worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this as much as I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. But, after reading so many good reviews, I couldn’t pass up on it.

The short stories included in this book are all fairy tales - whether retold or original. Some of them include characters from Jonathan Strange (including Jonathan Strange and the Raven King), but most of them deal with completely new characters. My favourites in the collection were ‘The Ladies of Grace Adieu,’ ‘Mrs Mabb’ and ‘John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner.’ In each of these stories, those who are considered to be “weaker” of all the characters are the protagonists of the stories. In ‘The Ladies of Grace Adieu,’ it is mentioned a few times how it is public opinion that there are no female magicians - yet these three women do practice magic. In ‘Mrs Mabb,’ an ordinary girl ends up outsmarting a fairy and rescuing her lover. ‘John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner’ tells the story of how the Raven King was got the better of by a not-so-smart peasant who asks for help from various deities.

The story I liked least was ‘Mr Simonelli of The Fairy Widower.’ As far as I can tell, the only reason I didn’t enjoy it as much as the others was because it was written like a journal, and I find that it is rare that I really enjoy stories and books written in that format.

One of the things I liked about this book was how each story had such a different voice. They didn’t feel like they were all written by the same person, and have reminded me of how talented Clarke is. Speaking of how talented and wonderful Clarke is, the first two paragraphs of the first short story (’The Ladies of Grace Adieu’) had me hooked immediately:

Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger.
And if we honour this principle we shall discover that our magic is much greater than all the sum of all the spells that were ever taught. Then magic is to us as flight is to birds, because then our magic comes from the dark and dreaming heart, just as the flight of a bird comes from the heart. And we will feel the same joy in performing that magic that the bird feels as it casts itself into the void and we will know that magic is part of what a man is, just as flight is part of what a bird is.

Something else that made the book enjoyable was the illustrations. The book was illustrated by Charles Vess, and they definitely evoke a feeling of the magical in them.

Lastly, a cool random bit about reading this book: I learned a little bit of info about my favourite font. There was a blurb in the back of the book along with the “A Note on the Author” and “A Note on the Illustrator” blurbs - “A Note on the Font”. Yay for Caslon. ;) *cough*YesI’mAGraphicDesignGeek*cough*