Customer Reviews

LOOKING FOR ANNE. How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recently made a trip to Prince Edward Island and picked up a number of books related to L.M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables. I actually had passed on this one because I saw that Amazon had such a fantastic price on it. Anyway, as an Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montgomery junkie, I've read practically every book on Maud and her work and this one is by far the best. The research in this book is positively amazing. Kudos to the author for digging so deeply and for taking the time to be so complete and thorough. However, I don't want people to think that this is some dry scholarly book, on the contrary, it is almost impossible to put down. Not only does the author dig up facts, she analyzes them with exceptional insight and brillance. She knows her subjects backwards and forwards. At times during the book, one could almost sense the presence of Maud Montgomery herself. It is as though she whispered her secrets to the author who then revealed them to us the readers. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves Anne or Maud. It is as close as a book can come to being perfect.

I read the Anne of GG books as a girl and watched the PBS movies countless times, but I'm not an Anne fanatic. For example, I've never visited PEI. :) I also don't really like to read biographies. I saw the book at my library and picked it up out of curiosity. So I'm not the typical reviewer of this book...

But I can't put it down! It reads like a mystery about how Maud was inspired to write Anne. It also has reflective commentary on the themes in the Anne books, which is interesting to think about in terms of what Anne meant to me while I was her age. And the reliance on Maud's diaries for piecing together history is intriguing to me, as someone who has sporadically kept diaries.

Overall, I am thoroughly enjoying the book -- it is my guilty pleasure every day.

I was disappointed by two aspects of this book. The first was the dramatic style of writing by the author. Just write, we get it.

The second was that I expected a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery's life, but I really didn't get a sense of who she was. This book ends near the publication date of "Anne," so I don't know anything about Maud's marriage, move west, birth of her 2 sons (I don't even know their names!), and when she and her husband die.

This is more of a scholarly look at the life of the book, instead of it's creator, so I was disappointed in that. There are also some allusions to lesbianism, but they're unfounded. No facts are brought to bear on that allegation. It just seems too "fashionable" to publish some "dirt" on this pastor's wife. It's speculation - looking back on 100 years of history - and I didn't like it. (The same thing was said when the author alludes that Hans Christian Anderson was a homosexual.) If you're going to make such statements, at least provide me with FACTS, not speculation. It's tawdry.

It's funny, but as you grow up you do see the flaws in your childhood icons, but it doesn't really hurt as much now as I think it would have back then. I loved the Green Gables books and have read almost everything that LM Montgomery has written back in the resurgence of her popularity in the 80s. Thought she was just about the most perfect writer, and all her books were so romantic, etc. I think I saw what I wanted to see. As Gammel points out, Montgomery really didn't have much romance in her, and most of her characters lasting relationships are with their best girl friends. She also was a bit of a snob, which does explain some references in her books that I always wondered about.

This was a very interesting book, retreading things I did know but putting them in a new light. Anyone who grew up reading Green Gables, or the Emily Series should pick this up.

Got this for someone who has always adored Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables" and who also recently traveled to Prince Edward Island to see and experience the beauty of that land. The book tells of L.M. Montgomery's life, inspirations for her writings, and includes many old photos. A perfect gift!

I loved this book! I am big fan of Anne of Green Gables and loved the way the book flowed and all the great detail on Maud's life and how the story of Anne came to life. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montgomery's life. Such a wonderful read!

Irene Gammel is rather over-dramatic here, and every little ad in the popular women's magazines of Montgomery's days is scrutinized and classified as the key to the eternal mystery of Anne of Green Gables. After a few hundred pages of this, I threw up my hands, moaning, "WHAT mystery?" I do appreciate being given so much of the context behind the creation of Anne Shirley, just as I appreciated Irene Gammel's previous book and her loving delineation of Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, but enough is enough and how many times can we find out that red hair was popular in 1905?

Come to think of it, the Baroness Elsa book was a lot about her hair too! Elsa was an early member of the Dada movement, "unhampered by sanity," who dyed her hair vermilion or blue depending on the season and appeared in a film by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp with more hair in it! Maybe Dr. Gammel just likes these hair women. On the surface Maud Montgomery lived a life much more uneventful than Elsa did, but Dr Gammel shows us that there were strains of eccentricity, narcissism, and evasion in Maud same as there was in Elsa. Maud preferred to look the other way while Evan went a little mad--the truth is, he was always mad, even when she first knew him. She was the princess of Denial.

Dr Gammel is just a little overblown in some of her metaphors (perhaps trying to match her style to LMM's)? Spring came in to Avonlea like a late lover, etc. No more, please, Doctor!

Like many spastic redheads over the past century, I feel very passionately about Anne Shirley's place in my world and how important her character was in shaping mine. Ms. Gammel has created an intriguingly exhaustive look into the history of this influential classic and has approached her subject on so many levels I wonder how she kept her research straight! I have knocked off one star only because on occasion I felt the writing became a bit histrionic for a biography, but in general I thought it beautifully and lovingly executed. Definitely a must-read for anybody who's always wanted to make that pilgrimage to PEI and lay a lily wreath for Anne, the eternally inspirational heroine of our childhoods.

Like other reviewers, I picked this book up at the library thinking it was a biography of L.M. Montgomery and how her classic stories came to be written. Like other reviewers I was put off by allegations of Montgomery's lesbianism without any real proof. The author of the book seems to forget that society was much different in those days in many respects (the friendships between women; the recognition that some parts of life are intended to remain private and not even included in journal entries; and that pre-teen girls were not generally permitted to read bodice-ripping romances (hence the relationship between Gilbert and Anne was romantic rather than sexual).Personally, I long for the days when society was reserved and there was room for romance rather than these days of reality TV and tabloids.

Further I had to laugh out loud at some of the pseudopsychological claptrap the author used to explain why Anne's hair was red. I don't have the book in front of me or I'd quote it directly, but believe me it was a hoot. Her hair was red, get over it.

Lastly, as I said, I was disappointed that the book was not a biography. For example, it only mentions the year of Montgomery's death as a year or two before or after her husband's (again, I don't have the book in front of me) and does not list the cause.

This was the only biography I had seen about Ms. Montgomery. I hope there are others out there that are not so lurid. She deserves better.

This is not meant to be a full biography of LM Montgomery, but an intertwined story of how events in her life meshed with the gradual birth of her most beloved creation, Anne of Green Gables. As such it touches on social and fashion trends of the era, the acceptability of passionate female friendships, convoluted courtships, and life on Prince Edward Island.

Many biographies start out in promising fashion, then get bogged down in too much detail. Not this narrative. If anything, it gets more and more compelling as it goes on; I was sorry to see it end. The author also broke the narrative up with subheads and lots of period images. Her writing style is really charming; she drops the more common too-dispassionate biographer's voice in favor of a warm and enthusiastic tone, but one that never loses its authority.

Really well done, this book is a treasure for LM Mongomery fans, revealing fresh content in a fascinating way.