L.M. Montgomery

Over the course of the last couple of months, I've reread many of the Montgomerys on my shelf. Not the series—Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon—but a lot of the stand-alone books of short stories and both the Story Girl books. Years ago, I also picked up two volumes of her collected journals at a book sale, and those are fascinating. I find her style soothing and comfortable—her heroines are a lot like I think many of us wanted to be at the ages she wrote about. Oh, who am I kidding? Some days I still want to be Anne of Green Gables. The other days, I just want to write it! The final book in the Anne series, Rilla of Ingleside, is one of my top 10 favorite books. No, really. Reading her journals made it clear why—RoI is set during World War I and contains many scenes from Montgomery's actual life. Certainly it retains a very authentic feel. You can tell she knew something about being harrowed through the events of the time period. She didn't know as much about the idealized lives she imagined for her heroines—hers was much more like the lives her heroines left for the happiness they would find with family, etc. But she had an intuitive feel for people's characters, and could find the flaw in the perfection or the gem inside the rock ... and make them live, which not every author can do. Montgomery's characters are still very idealized people who live only on the page, but at least they're rarely one-dimensional.