Eh. The first half was a draft of a book I would have gladly read for 400 more pages. The second half was an edited journal entry that seemed an altogether different author.

A short, interesting type of autobiography by the author of Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Maud's early years in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, and how her love of literature and writing began at such a young age. What an imagination she had! The last two chapters of the book are rather tedious, unfortunately, as are all about Maud's trip to Scotland on her honeymoon. But all in all this is a good book to read if you're a fan of the "Anne" books.

This book was a re-read for me. The Anne of Green Gables books were my favorites when I was a child, and I very literally read every single piece of writing by L.M. Montgomery that I could get my hands on when I was younger.

I wondered if I would have outgrown the thrill now as an adult, but in reading through The Alpine Path, I still felt like I was chatting with a fellow kindred spirit. LM Montgomery has a subtle satirical sense of humor that really shines through even more now that I am an adult.

But her writing is magical because she always viewed the world with a fantastical lens, a feeling that I too have related to my entire life. As a child I was jealous that I didn’t live on Prince Edward Island, but now I look back in retrospect and understand that the magic was probably not just PEI, for I too lived in magic wherever I went as a child.

This quote sums up what I mean, and I as I read it I feel my own thoughts echoed back at me:

“It has always seemed to me, ever since early childhood, that, amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never quite draw it aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond - only a glimpse - but those glimpses have always made life worth while.”

I also love the closing lines of the book:

“ ‘ He ne’er is crowned
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.’

True, most true! We must follow our ‘airy voices,’ follow them through bitter suffering and discouragement and darkness, through doubt and disbelief, through valleys of humiliation and over delectable hills where sweet things would lure us from our quest, ever and always must we follow, if we would reach the ‘far-off divine event’ and look out thence to the aerial spires of our City of Fulfilment.”

I wonder if she knew how her legacy would live on past her own lifetime? I wish I could invite her to a dinner party, but since I can’t, reading this little book is the next best thing.

I got this book last summer on Prince Edward Island at the birthplace of L.M. Montgomery. I like getting books relative to the places I travel. I picked up her biography or maybe autobiography and could barely lift it - seemed a lot more information than I really needed to know about Montgomery! The clerk recommended this one instead - a slim 96 page paperback. Sold.

For what it is, it is a lovely little book. It covers her life, or more accurately, her thoughts from childhood through her marriage and honeymoon and it was done in serial form when she was asked by a magazine, Everywoman's World, to write about her career as an author. As such, it is light and informative without bogging down into familial history or really much of any kind of biographical detail. I was well satisfied with my purchase. If I have a complaint, it would be that she seemed to get lazy as she discussed her honeymoon abroad and simply copied off her journal entries for the trip instead of telling us about it. And I might have liked to know a bit about her courtship and the man she married, as opposed to the one short paragraph in which her Grandmother died, she got married, and was off to Europe! But I guess I can delve into the monstrously heavy biography for that!

She wrote what she knew.

Recommended to all AoGG fans.

As whimsical and fanciful as Anne herself

This is an article that Maud wrote talking about the path that her career took. It contains quite a bit about her childhood on PEI, and much of the article is written with excerpts from her journals.

Light reading. Interesting. 4 stars

3.5 stars

Essentially a mini-autobiography of L.M. Montgomery. It's an enjoyable read, but I find myself wanting to know more. I might try reading her journals in some form some time.

Amused that after going to the opera to see an adaption of a book she comments 'It was good but not nearly so good as the book'! Even 120 years ago that sentiment was felt...

Una Lucy Maud Montgomery poco più che quarantenne sente di aver raggiunto finalmente il tanto agognato successo, di aver "scalato il sentiero alpino", ed ora che è arrivata in vetta vuole condividere con i suoi lettori la storia della sua carriera e dell'amore per la parola scritta.
Già dal racconto della sua infanzia emergono tanti elementi che riportano alle sue creature Anne e Emily.
Numerosissimi episodi della sua vita hanno trovato posto nelle storie che l'hanno resa celebre, anche se Lucy Maud sottolinea più volte che i suoi luoghi e personaggi sono completamente frutto della sua immaginazione.
Pur essendo in età adulta riesce a vestire ancora una volta i panni della sé stessa bambina, ricorda le abissali differenze che dividono il mondo infantile da quello adulto e il diverso modo di pensare e vivere gli avvenimenti della vita.
Non si tratta di un'autobiografia lineare, ma più che altro di una raccolta di stralci di vita, di momenti significativi e degni di essere ricordati per poter capire un po' più a fondo chi sia stata questa donna formidabile dal dono di inventare storie capaci di affascinare intere generazioni.

So fun to read, after having just visited PEI, and rereading the first three Anne books, mostly while *in* PEI. Magical!

No esperaba menos de Montgomery

This kind of thing is always hard to review; how do you critique the way someone remembers their life? It's very personal. Thankfully ol' Luce will never read this.

Anyway, I was really looking forward to this book after a trip to Cavendish over the summer, visiting Green Gables and making the walk over to where L. M. Montgomery's house originally stood. The guides there are awesome and extremely knowledgeable, being relations to the author (great great great nephew or something?) and told her story really wonderfully. I picked this up with hopes of filling in some more details, but it was kind of lacklustre.

My main issue was how long this book is - which may seem strange, seeing as it's a tiny little thing. But it really felt like Montgomery was stretching for content, particularly in the last two parts, which she borrows a lot from her own travel journals. This part really didn't entertain me or give much insight into how these travels affected her writing career. It was like she was contracted out for the 10 parts of this book (they were originally published in a series in a newspaper, I think the intro said), and realized she was running out of stuff.

The earlier chapters didn't do much else for me. Her childhood memories were probably nice if you were more into Anne of Green Gables and Montgomery's other works; I feel like they definitely would have given a little insight into some of the real life inspirations for her fictional world. But as a person who hasn't really read any of her work in a good fifteen years or more, I found these recollections a little dull.

The more interesting parts, for me, were the sections Montgomery talked about her initial attempts at getting published and her perseverance when success did not come immediately. Her drive is palpable and makes you want to go out and chase your own aspirations.

The editing on this little piece was pretty horrid; there was some strange punctuation which I found very jarring. The writing itself wasn't awful, nor was it terribly great. So all in all, I'd say fans should give this one a look, but otherwise, give it a pass.