In November, Naomi and Sarah are hosting a readalong for The Story Girl, so the last time I packed up my bookbag, I stuck in my copy of Elizabeth Waterston’s Magic Island (2008) to read her chapter on L.M. Montgomery’s 1911 novel.
Story Girl reads like a collection of short stories and, over the summer, I read a collection of L.M. Montgomery’s short stories—and a novella, more on that Monday, with Novellas in November in mind—but I’m rarely in the mood for them, and Story Girl strikes that tone for me.
So, I thought, why not read about it instead. Waterston counts 32 short tales embedded in the novel— pulled from LMM’s favourite sources, ranging from family gossip to school readers and mythologies—and considers the framing device LMM uses with this group of children sharing and admiring all the stories—a group of children that mirrors the Little Women group (Alcott’s March sisters and neighbour-boy Laurie).
Along the way, there are the usual joys, descriptions about the seasons and trees, and many fine quotations about telling stories and what’s satisfying and frustrating about imagination, along with a debate about whether it’s better to be interesting or useful. It was just in 1908 that the monumental Anne of Green Gables was published, so here’s LMM just a year later, starting to work on The Story Girl and she is feeling herself for sure.
It’s not enough to write stories now, she’s writing stories about telling stories—so there are lots of musings on the power of shaping and ordering, creating the endings you desire and that kind of thing—through these children’s stories. There’s also Paddy (Pat) the cat: “He had a sense of humour, had Pat. Very few cats have; and most of them have such an inordinate appetite for flattery that they will swallow any amount of it and thrive thereon. Paddy had a finer taste. The Story Girl and I were the only ones who could pay him compliments to his liking.” LMM gives Paddy the kind of ending her own cats didn’t have: that, I do love.
Waterston has so many wise things to say about how reading LMM’s journals brings out layers in Story Girl and how, in turn, reading Story Girl brings out layers in LMM’s thoughts and beliefs. (Waterston edited the journals for publication with Mary Rubio, who wrote a stunning biography of LMM, The Gift of Wings, also published in 2008).
One of my favourite parts about reading LMM’s journals was discovering that she was more complex than I’d guessed from her books. Orphaned Anne had an indomitable spirit and the strength to resist when others dampened her spirit; I longed for that kind of courage myself, so, in my early twenties, when I learned that her author struggled off-the-page in ways that Anne didn’t on-the-page, I felt a sense of kinship (and potential).
After LMM started working on Story Girl, her publisher asked her to shelve it and, instead, work up one of her longer standalone stories into a novel for immediate publication; LMM would be forever haunted and boosted by Anne’s success, grateful for and frustrated by the need to reproduce Anne, whether in cloned stories or additional Anne stories. So, she paused Story Girl to complete Kilmeny of the Orchard and, then, other disruptions to Story Girl followed, which Waterston describes.
Not that Waterston suggests that impacted the book negatively; she’s curious about how the nature of those disruptions affected the novel’s tone. She discusses specifically how LMM affords different women in the story atypical choices (e.g. remaining unmarried), her concerns about time passing and mortality (e.g. the grandmother with whom she lived and whom she cared for was nearing the end of her life, which would leave LMM stranded because she would not inherit), and her romantic life (e.g. not feeling the kind of passion for Ewan, the minister she’d eventually marry, that she felt for other men).
When Waterston quotes LMM’s journal entry about being sorrier to leave behind these characters than any others, I’m at a loss, because I didn’t feel that connection. After I’d learned about this in the journals, I’d reread Story Girl, thinking it would make me feel for them more, but I didn’t. Now, I wonder whether she wasn’t saying how little she cared for the other characters (including her growing resentment of Anne) than how much she cared for these. But I suspect it’s simply that I am fonder of the LMM books I first encountered as a young reader (which is nearly half of the twenty-two that Waterston presents).
Nonetheless, by the time I’ve finished Waterston’s chapter, she’s drawn so many interesting connections and raised so many questions that I begin to wish I’d reread Story Girl after all. But, then, I think, there’s the companion novel, too, The Golden Road, and that’s not a favourite either. And, then, I think, well, if I read Waterston on that book, I’d probably want to reread Golden Road too. So, then, I think about all the library books in the stack and how, lately, they’re finished at the last minute and rushed back for other borrowers. And, then, I leaf through the other chapters in Waterston and think about starting with LMM from the beginning so I could read straight through. This is how it is.
Also in the bookbag this month:
One Drum (2019), the book that Richard Wagamese was working on for three years before he died. It’s a slim, glossy-paged volume of writing on three of the Seven Grandfather Teachings in Ojibwe tradition: Humility, Courage, and Respect, He did not complete the chapters on Love, Honestly, Truth, and Wisdom. “Harmony is the energy that heals,” Wagamese writes: “However, it is a sad truth of the nature of our lives that many have no access to traditional teachers or the ceremonies and teaching that sustain a spiritual way. Even among my own people this is true.” You might choose to read this as an act of reconciliation, as part of a quest to understand. But you might be surprised to find yourself responding more deeply: “It begins, as all things do, with stories.”
A children’s book: Mon amie Agnès by Julie Flett (2019, Birdsong in English), a touching story about Katherena who moves with her mother to a small house far away from everyone except Agnès, who lives some distance away yet. The seasons pass and, thus, time passes, with Katherena often drawing the birds who live there too; she doesn’t really notice how differently the time passes for her friend, Agnès, who’s elderly by the time they are friends. Readers learn a little Cree along the way (Flett is a Cree-Métis artist)—like Pimihâwipîsim is “la lune des migrations” and Ayîkipîsim is “la lune des grenouilles”—and Katherena learns about friendship and what goes and what stays.
And, finally, a new collection of short essays and creative non-fiction, edited by Rebecca Solnit (among others), Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (2023). If you’re terrified by the climate crisis (and who isn’t) and haven’t yet found a way into reading about it, I wholeheartedly recommend this collection. It’s a tidy little packet from Haymarket Books, that easily slips into a pocket. Some of the pieces are very informal, others more scholarly, some inventive and messy, others lyrical and crafted. The tone is remarkable. “It is late,” Solnit writes: “We are deep in an emergency. But it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided.”
Are you reading LMM this month? What’s in your bookbag?
Oh, yes, that could indeed suggest she wasn’t happy with the people around her. Maybe what I loved when I was a child wasn’t so much the novel The Story Girl, but the idea of a “story girl,” like Anne or Emily, as well as Sara Stanley and LMM herself.
I agree with your assessment of the work of Rubio and Waterston, and I think you might be right that not all readers want to know the full story. Even those of us who’ve read about and are interested in her real experiences don’t necessarily want to read every single page of the journals, especially the ones that cover the later years. I’m speaking for myself here, and guessing I’m not alone in feeling this way.
I was half-kidding, but Waterston does mention she was ruminating on two other relationships she found more exciting than hers with Ewan; maybe LMM was also trying to draw attention to the value of a storyteller (didn’t Ewan suggest at some point that she should give up her writing if it was troublesome for her?) and insist on it in public even if she doubted whether privately he supported her or understood that stories can be important. Take That, Ewan. (Poor Ewan, he was sad too, wasn’t he.)
There are parts I’ve skimmed over in the later journals that I read carefully at first, just as I skipped the sad parts in various LMM books (I skipped religiously whenever that field came into view). But I also think her not acknowledging (denying even? in her journal rewrites?) those sorrows and doubts and fears, those overwhelming feelings of isolation and loneliness, led to her ending things, so how ironic that we might hesitate to recommend them, by-the-by perpetuating this silence, rather than inviting people to find comfort in a shared sense of loss or grief or enduring disappointment. But, maybe there are some things books can’t change?
You’ve said this beautifully—thank you. Those are powerful questions and I agree, it’s ironic that we might hesitate, when the truth has the potential to help, even if we can’t be certain that it will.
I just wrote a comment and then accidentally deleted it…. I’ll try to remember what I said. Like you, I didn’t feel that connection with these characters, and I was surprised that LMM was so sorry to say goodbye to them.
I suppose I’m glad we decided to reread The Story Girl, but I’m also sad to find that, as with some other LMM books I’ve reread as an adult, the novel isn’t as wonderful as I thought it was when I was a child. I guess that isn’t a big surprise, but it’s still sad. I’ve enjoyed reading about the creation of the novel, in Waterston’s book and Rubio’s biography, and of course in the journals, more than I enjoyed reading the novel itself. At the same time, I know what you mean about reading Waterston—her book also inspires me to read LMM from the beginning, even though I don’t really have time.
Maybe it says more about who else she was (and wasn’t) spending time with, that they seemed such brilliant company. Hee hee
For me, this wasn’t that kind of disappointment because it’s one that I never chose to reread (much? at all?) when I was young either, but I understand what you mean. I reread a lot of my childhood favourites well into my teen years (they were there, choices were limited) when other kids my age had moved into more adult fare (which I read, too, but not exclusively), so I parted ways with some favourites early on and just continued to reread the ones I really loved.
Rubio’s and Waterston’s work is simply outstanding, isn’t it? I want to press it into the hands of all the LMM fans in the world. But I wonder if many would prefer to not know about her real experiences. Maybe it’s nicer to imagine her having had Anne’s life.
(I didn’t see the other comment, so it really must have gotten deleted after all.)
Not Too Late sounds like a must!
Don’t you just love Julie Flett’s picture books?
Reading *about* The Story Girl is just as good as far as I’m concerned. Although, I know I wouldn’t be able to resist reading the book after reading *about* the book. It’s so interesting to learn about! But it sounds like you’ve had a more recent reread of it than I have. I’m actually into The Golden Road now, which, I think, I might like better.
It’s really good: a keeper.
I do! Maybe I should write about more? But I think I wrote more words than she did, and her story is ever so much nicer.
Hmmm, maybe ten years ago? You asked, on your blog, but it wouldn’t let me reply beneath, if I had reread Jane earlier this year when you and Sarah were rereading it; I didn’t reread it then, but it IS one of my favourites for rereading. (Oh, dear, I’m not a fan of TGR, or KotO either. You two are on a run of all the ones I like least lol).
These all sound so interesting. I really should read LMM, I think I’d enjoy her.
I think you’d enjoy her too, but maybe either the famous Anne or the slightly-less-famous Emily or The Blue Castle to start with.
Lots of great books and stories here. The collection by Solnit intrigues me. I can’t remember if you read this one as well, but I read Britt Wray’s Generation Dread book a few months ago, all about grief, anxiety, and the climate which I found really helpful too.
Yup, we just chatted about this, and I mentioned her newsletter and you said “oh, that sounds fantastic, I’m going to rush off now and subscribe to that” and then you…obviously didn’t. LOL Ok, I’m kidding about that part, but yes, we both appreciated Wray’s approach. What I think you’d enjoy about Not Too Late is the variation in styles and author’s backgrounds: something different and short, to enjoy with a cuppa in the morning to set the mood for the day ahead.
I have no idea how you read (and write up) as much as you do. I had every intention of reading Story Girl this month. BUT. I have a book each for my two blogs, two books for yours all which must be read ‘physically’ – ie. no audiobooks! which I can consume easily while I am working (and yes, I admit I also have at least one book on the go at any one time just for pleasure). So, sorry, Naomi, unless I get absolutely zero work for the rest of the month, Story Girl will have to go by the board.
Completely understandable, Bill. There’s never any need to apologize for having too many books to read! 🙂
Well, you know now that I’m not always up-to-date either, as you’ve just published your post on The Edible Woman today and I’m still in the middle of it. It can be helpful to be able to listen and to read on a screen and to read printed books, the combo can create new opportunities for reading time in different circumstances, but, ultimately, we’re all stuck by the fact that there are the same number of hours in every day. Sigh.
An interesting range of writing! I am currently focusing on the Atwood essays and loving them!
The Bookbag does have the tendency to capture an unusually varied selection, even for an eclectic reader…essentially it comes down to size/format! Glad you’re enjoying MA’s essays.