The road to yesterday [Unbound]

 

 

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The Road To Yesterday is my favourite of Lucy Montgomery's collection of stories. It makes you want to live vicariously through the experiences of the characters. What is also lovely is that you read more about Anne's descendents and more about her as well. I cannot count the amount of times I have reread this book. You will not regret your purchase.

I would definitely call myself a Lucy Maud Montgomery fan. I find it enjoyable and relaxing to read her lighthearted books from a gentler time. However, I found The Road to Yesterday somewhat disappointing.

This book is a collection of stories which take place in the area around Glen St. Mary, the town where Gilbert and Anne Blythe settled down and raised their family. Although none of the stories are about them, every story mentions them, sometimes to a maddening degree. It seems that LM Montgomery was trying to place as many references to the Blythes in the stories as she possibly could. Quite frankly, this gets old fast. Every character in every story is thinking every page or so, "Dr. Blythe always says such and such," "That woman hasn't aged well, not like Mrs. Dr. Blythe," or "It was almost as tasty as Susan Baker's famous cake," etc. etc. One gets the impression that the Blythe family is at the very centre of life in Glen St. Mary, and always at the forefront of everyone's minds, which is a bit ridiculous.

Furthermore, the actual quality of the stories is uneven, although it does improve as the book goes on. Most of the stories felt very rushed to me, almost like this was the author's rough copy, before she went in and polished them and added more detail. Some of the characters were quite interesting, and I would have liked to read a whole book about them, instead of one quick story sparse on detail. Sadly, in these stories there is almost none of LM Montgomery's characteristic "purple prose," by which I mean beautiful, romantic descriptions of nature.

Interesting to note is that the first story appears to take place around the year 1900, when Jem Blythe is a little boy, and continue onward in time. The last story takes place during World War 2, when Gilbert Blythe is an old man and about to retire. One of the characters mentions that Anne and Gilbert's grandsons are going to fight in the war, which I personally found quite sad, since their son Walter had already died in World War 1, and also because it's simply sad to think of Anne and Gilbert as being elderly grandparents, with the golden days of Avonlea, of Marilla and Matthew, so very far in the distant past as to be ancient history.

However, although I was not deeply impressed with the quality of the stories, and although the last story left me feeling sad, I still gave the book three stars, because after all, it IS LM Montgomery, and her writing has a certain charm that makes up for a lot. Also, the very last story in the book, A Commonplace Woman, was very powerful and moving. This story alone makes up for all the frivolous stories that came before it.

A Commonplace Woman is even more powerful if you realize that it is a story of an old woman dying and looking back on her life--and that LM Montgomery completed this manuscript and gave it to her publisher the very day before her own death, a death which we now know was suicide. It gave me chills to think of the author writing of this character's death, a death which no one mourned, while contemplating her own.

As a final note I will mention that a newer version of these stories has come out, with additional material (poems etc.) that LM Montgomery original intended to be included. This version is called The Blythes are Quoted. As far as I know, it contains all the same stories as The Road To Yesterday, which I purchased instead simply because it was less expensive.

While this is not my most favorite of LMM's short story collections, it does have very good stories. It offers a few extra tidbits about the Blythes, although I agree with others, that it seems a bit forced at times. However, I want to make a point of saying that this book includes what I think may be LMM's most powerful short story: A Commonplace Woman. That story alone is worth buying the book. It is an incredible tale of the life of one woman, who everyone thinks is simply an old boring woman, who never did anything of interest in her life. As she lies in a bed upstairs dying, her relatives sit around downstairs waiting for her to die and talking about how boring her life was. Meanwhile, the woman, Ursula, is remembering her life and the one secret that made her and her life extremely rewarding and interesting, and if anyone had known of it, they would change their opinion of her in a hurry. I don't want to give away what the secret is, but, believe me, it's a wonderful story, easily the most beautiful, sad, thought-provoking and rich of LMM's short stories, once you get past the somewhat long- winded beginning! Besides this one, I highly recommend all of Lucy Montgomery's books, they are all excellent. I re-read most of mine very year!

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5.0 out of 5 stars A good read
This book was very interesting and funny,the best of Montgomery's short story collections. The only flaw was the constant referances to the Blythes---especially since everyone... Read more

Published on Aug 10 2000 by cynsta

5.0 out of 5 stars The Road To Yesterday
As a Lucy Maud Montgomery fan I loved this book. It showcases her amazing ability to make a character live and breath...even across 70 years. Read more

Published on Jan 17 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Road To Yesterday is look into the world around Anne.
The Road to Yesterday contains many many wonderful stories about Glen St. Mary, where Anne and Gilbert and their children live. Read more

Published on Aug 4 1998

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