The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career

After having read Anne of Green Gables in the past and my daughter flying through the series and then watching the series that was on when A&E used to be an arts and entertainment channel instead of pawning treasure or panning for it, I found that Montgomery had written a semi-autobiography. This was collected from articles she wrote for a newspaper who had commissioned her to write about her life. This has all the elements of an autobiography but realizing the amount of detail is limited and there's no second writer to tease out the story and details.

This was a joy to read as Montgomery's writing about her life reads just like any of her other books. While you realize that Anne isn't a stand in for the author, it's clear that the show more personality of characters like Anne are familiar to Montgomery and of course the setting of Prince Henry Island plays the key backdrop in her novels is key in her life. Montgomery starts with her early life and the larger ideas of family in community, especially after the death of her mother at a young age. Like the writing of her novels she sometimes goes off on these beautiful side tangents that fill in the unique perspective of a simple time and place. For example she writes this, "Behind the barn grew a pair of trees I always called 'The Lovers,', a spruce and maple, and so closely intertwined that the boughs of the spruce were literally woven into the boughs of the maple...They lived in happy union for many years. The maple died first, the spruce held her dead form in his green, faithful arms for two more years. But his heart was broken and he died too. They were beautiful in their lives and in death not long divided; and they nourished a child's heart with a grace-giving fancy." The grizzled, nihilistic author of today is non-existent here.

For some of her fans, she does limit her story of her books some. Although she does reveal that The Story Girl seems to be one of her favorites. And her tenacious attitude in getting published in writing, a different process altogether than today, and in getting Anne of Green Gables especially published, evokes qualities of Anne's personality itself.

A pure pleasure to read about a person who gave us some great stories in the mythical land of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Final Grade - A show less

The Alpine Path is L.M. Montgomery’s own biography of her life and struggles to get started as a writer. I realized, through reading this, that I’ve been reading her novels for ages without ever really knowing what the author herself was like. I have worshipped her since I was about thirteen years old without any really clear idea of how the woman was as a person. After reading even about fifteen of her books in the span of about two months, I think it was about time that I actually learned about her, and how better than straight from her own mouth?

I’ve read a couple of biographies of L.M. Montgomery, but none of them really captures the essence of how she was. Nothing really could, I don’t think. It was a really nice change to show more learn directly about her, to hear about her anecdotes from childhood and young adulthood and see just how her experiences through life affected her writing and even appeared in her stories. These stories that she shares in this relatively short autobiography are not in any of the biographical pieces that I’ve read about her, probably due to there personal nature and the necessity of first-person perspective while relating them. After all, told from the third person it would seem rather a regurgitation of her novels and short stories rather than an anecdote of her life.

I think reading about her is quite as fulfilling as reading about her heroines - possibly even better because unlike them, she was a real, living, breathing person who left a tangible mark on the world which hopefully hundreds more generations will experience. show less