|
epitome of incomprehensibility
|
This L. M. Montgomery book is a continuation of The_Story_Girl. The "golden road" is youth, mentioned in poetic asides, and the new thing here is that Bev's friend group decides to write a magazine together.
I have a thing for smaller written works inside larger ones. It's like a collage, sort of. And this one is quite funny.
We don't get quite as many of Sara the Story Girl's stories, but a bit more of her character.
Sometimes the narration gets too flowery for my taste, but the chapter where Bev, Sara, and Sara's father go for a rambling walk in the woods benefits from the poetic descriptions. I read this chapter a couple of days ago, outside in the backyard in the shade of the apple tree, and the scene brought to mind the woods around St. Adèle. Three outsides: the Maritimes in the book, the Laurentian hills in my mind, and the suburban summer shade surrounding me (marred slightly by the whiff of rotting apples and grumble of passing planes). But: a mood. A calming one.
I said this before, but I think this and The_Story_Girl could be one book instead of two. This one has a more natural endpoint, when several of the characters have to go different ways. It's melancholy and nostalgic, but also with comfort attached: the "golden road" will remain in memory. And in goofy amateur magazines.
(Memory: I wish I still had some of the newspaper I wrote with my friend Amanda when we were ten and eleven. It was called N.E.W.S. for North, East, West, South. The logo involved a compass. I remember thinking we were terribly clever for that!)
|
250821
|
