L.M. Montgomery, called Maud by those she was close to, was, of course, the author of Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon and many other books. During her life and for many decades after, she was seen as a woman who lived a fairly straightforward life, but as this biography shows, many of the darker depths of her novels reflect, directly or indirectly, the complex and often unhappy life she read.

Maud was a woman who felt things deeply -- both the positive and the negative -- and a woman who had great discipline. She could have a public persona of a happy, successful author while writing in her journal of the depths of her misery. I believe that both portraits have some truth. The happy, successful woman was not a lie, but she was only able to exist because Maud had the discipline to compartmentalize her life.

The saddest part of Maud's story, in my view, is the way that prescription drugs most likely caused much of that misery in their effects on her husband and herself. Ewan MacDonald, Maud's husband, suffered from depression, as best we can tell, and Maud herself seemed to suffer from anxiety and possibly depression too. Both were given prescription drugs which were fairly standard at the time but which are known now to just make depression and anxiety worse, cause other physical ailments, and are addictive. It doesn't take much reading between the lines of Maud's journal and what we know of her life to see that whenever the drug use was heaviest, the problems she and Ewan suffered were worst.

Maud could be a difficult and complex person, but she also had great insight and energy. It is easy to see how such a woman could write novels and stories which seem simple and happy on the surface and have the whole depth of human experience just underneath. ( )

I read through the first section of the book on Maud's PEI years, then skimmed through the rest of the book, focusing on the passages related to the creation, analysis, or reception of each of Maud's novels. The author did a TON of research on Maud. I felt she interviewed anyone peripherally relevant in her life, checked into even the lineage of anyone peripherally relevant in her life, and visited any place peripherally relevant in her life :P And the author held high respect for Maud's novels; she wrote serious analyses of her books and laid out clear arguments on how each of her books connected with/reflected Maud's personal life. She provided TONS and TONS of details on Maud and her family's legal troubles, and the wrongdoings of Maud's prodigal eldest son. She wrote up passages on how she believed Maud's (and Maud's husband Ewan's) mind or character was influenced by these life experiences. This was a 600-page book. If you want information on the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery, I'm reasonably sure you will get everything you want or need, and more out of this biography. Even though I often agree with the author's analysis of Maud's books, or state of mind, or character, I don't "always" agree, so I would have liked this book better if she focused more on the facts and gave the reader more room to pose our own conjectures.

Some interesting things I learned from this book: A lot of the royalty money Maud should have received from her earliest and most famous books -- Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, The Story Girl, The Golden Road.... -- were bamboozled by Maud's publisher who forged bookkeeping records with low sales. And the publisher eventually bought the rights of these books from Maud, so for most of her life she received no money from the book sales, not did she get any money when Anne series were adapted into drama or film. She wanted to write other books that are just as good or sell even better than the Anne series, but could never quite succeed. Late in her career she wrote Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of Ingleside in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of her earlier books. So the eight-volume Anne series were not written in chronological order. ( )

Do you think you know LM Montgomery from reading her children's books? Nope! This book is fascinating for so many reasons but perhaps what appealed to me the most was the discussion of how Maud manipulated her journal for publication. ( )

Read the Journals first. The authors did a very smart thing, they interviewed many of the people who knew LMM before the journals were published, before people had a chance to read LMM's point of view. I had always wondered what really happened because LMM fairly enough is writing from her point of view and with the knowledge and intention that her journals would be published. She lied, to herself mostly, could she possibly have been that naive about Chester. And she was brutally honest.

Her journals are the only example of journals I have ever read that I think harmed the writer. She created a picture of herself and then lived up to it. ( )

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/2009/06/13/lucy-maud-montgomery-the-gift-of-w... ( )