Customer Reviews

The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career

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I have read quite a number of versions of LMM's biographies, and I think this one is one of the best. Although this isn't as rich in content as the LMM Album or the four volumes of LMM's own journals, this book is already able to give the readers the enough information that a LMM fan will want to know about this wonderful story-teller. Besides, I think this book is very suitable for teenagers to read, very suitable for beginners of LMM fans who want to know more about this author of the famous Anne books. A very enjoyable and quick read, but at the same time, very informative.

One would think, when picking up an autobiography, that it's time to get out the caffeine, or at least a comfortable chair. But Maud's is different - mostly because she makes her life into a story - a story as interesting and as fun as her beloved Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon. The words and stories of her life make the book one that is impossible to put down...who knows what might happen to Maud on the next page. Also, because she wrote it, the reader know what she is thinking, what she was like as a child because there is no one retelling it but herself.

L.M. Montgomery's life is a life story of conquoring adversity and making one's dream come true. Although taken care of in the material sense as a child, she was not nurtured in the emotional sense and this created a need to escape into a fairyland of her imagination where she was accepted and loved and had friends, including "window friends."

This book is a collection of autobiographical articles written by L.M. Montgomery in 1917 in response to an editor's request for her to write the story of her literary career. Montgomery speaks a lot about her early childhood and her later struggles to make it as a writer, alone, without encouragement, support, or understanding from others. In fact, her literary ambitions and attempts were often scoffed at or criticized. But Maud kept keepin' on, confident that she would "arrive" some day. And she did, in an enormous way.

I highly recommend this book to anyone in need of inspiration or encouragement to make their dream come true, and especially to any aspiring writer whose dream is to climb the alpine path and reach that far-off goal of true and honoured fame.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"

The Alpine Path by L M Montgomery is interesting but only superficial. She was asked by a magazine to write the story of her career but she was not at all willing to tell things about her private life to the magazine readers so she wrote this book - it was originally published in a magazine. The facts are correct but there is so much left out by her. To really understand her life and find out all the interesting bits she left out of The Alpine Path you need to read her Journals (1 to 5) as these are quite fascinating and really tell her story. At the time she wrote the Alpine Path it would have caused a scandal if she had told the whole truth. I recommend the Journals to anyone interested in the real life of Maud Montgomery. They are wonderful.
Marjorie Lockwood

People don't usually write autobiographies if their career has only just started. Maud was asked to do so and she did write it. What she came up with, is a bunch of memories gathered in a nice little book, a perfect read for one evening if you love LMM. You will find some of her memories familiar, if you know LMM's books well, too. That's a nice and easy read, and a must for a LMM fan.

If you're not a fan of L. M. Montgomery's work, you might not find this book very interesting - for me, most of the interest came from parallels between her own life and that of various characters in her books, and her explanations of things like how she started writing her first book, why she didn't borrow her characters too closely from real life, etc. I'd have liked to read more of her accounts of how she wrote this story or that.

The book is mostly about her childhood and various anecdotes and events from it, along with accounts of how she came to be a published writer. It's fairly short; you can read it in less than an hour, so if you want a good, meaty book, this is not for you. But it's nice to read about her from her own point of view - her journals make good reading but this is more of a summary of info she considered interesting or relevant.

"The Alpine Path" is a short 1917 autobiographical sketch written by author Lucy Maud Montgomery for a Canadian women's magazine. It captures her at a high point in her life and career, already famous for her novel "Anne of Green Gables", and with several additional novels to her credit.

Montgomery manages to make her own life sound like one of her stories, tracing her childhood in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island; her long and difficult apprenticeship as a writer; her stints as a school teacher and a editor at a newspaper; and finally, achieving success as a writer. The sketch closes with a narrative of her honeymoon trip to Scotland prior to the First World War.

The sketch is an interesting read for its obvious parallels between her life in Prince Edward Island and the content of "Anne of Green Gables" and Montgomery's favorite of her own novels, "The Storygirl." It also carefully bleaches out the details of her lonely childhood and difficult marriage, which are available in her journals and more extensive formal biographies, such as that by Mary Henley Rubio.

"The Alpine Path" is another high quality reprint by Dodo Press, highly recommended to fans of Lucy Maud Montgomery as an example of her superb writing skills applied to her own life.

Maud, as Montgomery liked to be called, wrote this book on the request for a serial story appearing in a Canadian woman's magazine. At first Montgomery had doubts that her "long, upward struggle" could actually be called a career, but she worked on the story anyways and the result is a humurous, enjoyable, and information-packed book about the work and perseverance by one of the world's favorite children's author. As a professional writer, I have written articles upon Montgomery and still consider this book the best source for reliable information as well as beng enjoyable to read, which is a rare and refreshing break from most biographies. I highly recommend this book, along with her journals, as a worthwhile addition to any Montgomery fan, researcher, or fan of biographies'library.