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Product Description
Book Description
Elizabeth Waterston is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. L.M. Montgomery grew up in Prince Edward Island, a real place of "politics and potatoes." But it's her fictional island, a richly textured imaginative landscape that has captivated a world of readers since 1908, when Anne of Green Gables became the first of Montgomery's long string of bestsellers. In this wide-ranging and highly readable book, Elizabeth Waterston uses the term "magic" to suggest that peculiar, indefinable combination of attributes that unpredictably results in creative genius. Montgomery's intelligence, her drive, and her sense of humour are essential components of this success. Waterston also features what Montgomery called her "dream life," a "strange inner life of fancy which had always existed side by side with my outer life." This special ability to look beyond the veil, to access vibrant inner vistas, produced deceptively layered fictions out of a life that saw not just its share of both fame and ill fortune, but also what Waterston calls "dark passions." A true reader's guide, Magic Island explores the world of L.M. Montgomery in a way never done before. Each chapter of Magic Island discusses a different Montgomery book, following their progression chronologically. Waterston draws parallels between Montgomery's internal "island," her personal life, her professional career, and the characters in her novels. Designed to be read alongside the new biography of Montgomeryby Mary Rubio, this is the first book to reinterpret Montgomery's writing in light of important new information about her life. A must-read for any Montgomery fan, Magic Island offers a fresh and insightful look at the world of L.M. Montgomery and the "magic" of artistic creation.
About the Author
Elizabeth Waterston was born in Montreal, and educated at McGill, Bryn Mawr, and University of Toronto. She taught literature at the University of Guelph and the University of Western Ontario for many years, and is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful Overview of Heroine's Connections to Montgomery's Own Life, May 30 2009
By L. Loyd - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery (Hardcover)
Elizabeth Waterston is a long-term L.M. Montgomery scholar, and has put out a nice little (221 pages) overview of every published Montgomery novel and the connections between her literary output and her own life. Overall, I found the book very readable and interesting. I thought that the format of the book, a separate chapter for each novel, though the chapter may be only a few pages, was a good choice on the author's part. The chapters are interesting and brought up some good points that either bolstered, challenged, or added a new angle to ideas that I have had over the years about Montgomery's books, specifically her ideas as to what constitutes a happy marriage, and the role of women in society.I read this quickly after reading what, I believe, is supposed to be the companion, or rather a complementary, novel, "The Gift of Wings" by Mary Henley Rubio. That book was much more comprehensive and specifically biographical. Between the two, there was some overlap, but not so much that reading became laborious. For the more casual interested reader, I would recommend the shorter literary critique featured in "Magic Island," as it covers a lot of relevant ground without getting into the 700-page territory, though "The Gift of Wings" is an excellent biography. For the dedicated Montgomery fan, reading both of these new works gives a very well-rounded impression of the writer, her craft, and her prodigious literary output. Recommended.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indeed a Magic Island, Dec 2 2009
By Louise - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery (Hardcover)
For this insatiable and incurable Montgomery lover, every new book about her or her work is compulsory reading and this one is a gem. Well-known Montgomery scholar Ms Waterston's approach is orderly and compelling. From 'Anne of Green Gables' to 'Jane of Lantern Hill', each book is dissected and its vital organs are pictured against Montgomery's life at the time of writing, against the prevailing social and sometimes religious mores of her time, and, with the exception of 'The Blue Castle', against the magic landscape of Prince Edward Island.It is such a joy to read viewpoints that closely mirror your own and you smugly think how very clever Ms Waterston is... Encountering deviant interpretations - deviating from your ideas, that is - initially make you shake your head, but the well-worded and well-argumented accounts soon make you realise that Ms Waterston may have it right after all. This book made me want to run to my bookshelves and reread all the Montgomery books and the 'Selected Journals'.
I would have to disagree on one point, however. According to Ms Waterston, Montgomery wrote about TWO islands: the real Prince Edward Island with the oppressiveness of an isolated and close-knit conservative society, and the idealised Prince Edward Island as a magic island with its abundance of natural beauty and its friendly communities with their freshly-painted farmhouses. Two years ago a dream came true for me and I finally made a pilgrimage to Prince Edward Island. And willingly indoctrinated by Montgomery's influence I saw just ONE island, where real life and fiction seamlessly merged into each other: indeed a Magic Island.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Montgomery's Magic Island..., Aug 2 2010
By D. S. Thurlow - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery (Hardcover)
2008's "Magic Island" is Elizabeth Waterston's literary exploration of the fictions of Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for the "Anne of Green Gables" series. L.M. Montgomery was a prolific writer, with twenty-two novels and hundreds of short stories published in her lifetime.Waterston's approach relies on the metaphor of an island. Prince Edward Island was Montgomery's birthplace and a source of inspiration for much of her literary output. The "Magic Island" of the title was the imagined world into which Montgomery escaped from her often difficult life circumstances in order to create her stories.
Waterston matches the development of each of Montgomery's novels against the parrallel events in her life. The result is fascinating context and insight into the development of the novels and into Montgomery's progression as a writer. Readers will learn, for example, that Montgomery was driven to write nine "Anne" novels in part by reader and publisher demand and in part by her need to work through issues in her own life by translating them into fiction. Readers need not agree with Waterston's every opinion to enjoy this book. This reviewer disagrees with her interpretation of "Anne of the Island", but cheerfully acknowledges the value of being thoughtfully provoked.
"Magic Island" is very highly recommended to fans of L.M. Montgomery and the "Anne of Green Gables" series for its insights into the working craft of an accomplished author.
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