A few days ago, I shared a few titles of books that I had recently added to my bookshelf with a friend. We’ve lingered on a novel that she felt it had put her in a “melancholic” mood for days due to the amount of despair, helplessness, self-pity, and anger that came from the words.

In one of her interviews, the author of the novel mentioned that the rage sensed in her writings is just a reflection of the unfair society in which she grew up, and the words were her only way to revolt against the whole system that was feeding this injustice.

I can remember one work that was pretty arduous for me trying to separate the author‘s life from the heroine of her story; 

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian novelist who wrote more than 500 short stories, 21 novels, two poetry collections, and numerous anthropology journals and essays. She’s best known for her book “Anne of Green Gables” a story of a feisty, red-haired orphan named Anne Shirley, who arrives unexpectedly in the small farming community of Avonlea and soon captures the hearts and minds of her newfound family and neighbors.

The novel has been translated into more than 20 languages and adapted to theatre plays, cartoons, movies, and TV series for over a century. The last one was 

Is it Anne or Maud? I’m not sure anymore.

My first intention was to enjoy Anne’s journey through the novel’s chapters. Still, then with every word, sentence, and paragraph, I had the feeling that I was meeting Lucy Maud Montgomery in person. I was able to travel with her to the green landscapes of Prince Edward Island to be in her company when she was a child. I saw the first glimpses of an upcoming novelist, noticed her meticulous attention to detail, and admired her continuous search for meaning, home, and belonging.

It seems nearly impossible to distance or detach a writer’s life from their writings because they are inseparable and their view of the world is always going to show up anyway in their genuine expressions and remarkable ability to connect the dots, on our end, we find ourselves, as readers, moved and amazed by the beauty of a work that defies our description.

This concise but sincere approach has been written with much love and admiration for L.M. Montgomery’s life and work. Genuinely grateful to Yacine Yahiaoui for the help, time, and effort made in reviewing the article.