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I love L.M. Montgomery. Interestingly, I don't love her for Anne of Green Gables--I liked Anne but I can barely remember her, honestly, and I tuned out around book 4, whichever was the one that was only letters. Maybe I was young for it, I don't know, but that book was boring. I loved L.M. Montgomery for Emily of New Moon first. Then I loved her for Among the Shadows and all the lovely creepy little ghost stories in it. And then I discovered The Blue Castle, which is among my very favorite books of all time. Valancey is such a wonderful character. I could read that book again and again. And I have.
And today, I love L.M. Montgomery for A Tangled Web. What a smart little book! The plot: Aunt Becky, on her deathbed, calls all her huge and quirky family to a gathering. She owns the ancient and much revered family jug. Who will inherit it when she dies? She declares that no one will know the heir until a year from next October, and further, she gives a list of criteria that the future jug owner must meet--or maybe those criteria don't have anything to do with it, but you'd better go along, just to be safe. The entire family ends up changing and growing in crazy ways--as it says on the first page, a number of things happen because of the jug, and a number of things do not happen. It's Montgomery, so you know everything works out for the best, but finding out how it all comes together is incredibly enjoyable. This book has a huge cast of characters, which in the first chapter is humorous but overwhelming, and I thought I could never remember them all. By the end, I knew and loved every nasty old one of them. (Except Uncle Duncan, the bastard.) I was also happy to find in this book a positive and cheerful depiction of an old maid, from the perspective of the maid in question. I can't remember seeing this from Montgomery before--there are plenty of old maids who adopt lonely yet spunky orphans, of course, but usually we just see them from the orphan's perspective and don't get the old maid's own opinion about it.
I think Montgomery is really underrated. She can knit together a plot beautifully, and she knows her characters so incredibly well. Most people just know her for Anne and don't realize she wrote books for adults too. I absolutely loved this book. Yay!
And today, I love L.M. Montgomery for A Tangled Web. What a smart little book! The plot: Aunt Becky, on her deathbed, calls all her huge and quirky family to a gathering. She owns the ancient and much revered family jug. Who will inherit it when she dies? She declares that no one will know the heir until a year from next October, and further, she gives a list of criteria that the future jug owner must meet--or maybe those criteria don't have anything to do with it, but you'd better go along, just to be safe. The entire family ends up changing and growing in crazy ways--as it says on the first page, a number of things happen because of the jug, and a number of things do not happen. It's Montgomery, so you know everything works out for the best, but finding out how it all comes together is incredibly enjoyable. This book has a huge cast of characters, which in the first chapter is humorous but overwhelming, and I thought I could never remember them all. By the end, I knew and loved every nasty old one of them. (Except Uncle Duncan, the bastard.) I was also happy to find in this book a positive and cheerful depiction of an old maid, from the perspective of the maid in question. I can't remember seeing this from Montgomery before--there are plenty of old maids who adopt lonely yet spunky orphans, of course, but usually we just see them from the orphan's perspective and don't get the old maid's own opinion about it.
I think Montgomery is really underrated. She can knit together a plot beautifully, and she knows her characters so incredibly well. Most people just know her for Anne and don't realize she wrote books for adults too. I absolutely loved this book. Yay!
