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Title: The Story Girl
ISBN: 1434652874
Author:
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Publicate Date: 2007-09-04
Publish: 2007-09-04
List Price: $13.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $13.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $15.83
Amazon Merchant Price: $13.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Saccharine
I'm with chilirlw. Not only is the hyperbole about Sara's magnetism tiresome, it's also cloying. I'm an LMM fan and have read almost all her books except the 'Sara' ones. I've always found her tales nostalgic and innocent but always on the right side of sentiment-not overdone. Here the sugar turns saccharine. The Story Girl, with her improbable nickname, mouths such unlikely gems as, "Where are you, children?" when trying to find her best friends. I highly doubt evev children of the time referred to each other as "children." Dialogue is stilted and weird. The constant stories of the eponymous girl are tiresome and interrupt the flow of the main storyline, such as it is. Read Anne or Emily or Pat over and over again and save youself from this one.
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2: talks down to kids
L. M. Montgomery, author of the much-loved Anne of Green Gables books, called The Story Girl "my favorite among my books", possibly because she saw the title character as a kind of romanticized version of herself. As the rest of us must lack that pleasurable sense of self-flattery, however, I'm afraid the book falls flat. In it, the adventures of a group of eight Canadian children ages 11-14 (narrated by one of the boys looking back from adulthood), are interspersed with the stories told to them by the eldest of their number, the Story Girl herself. We are told (again and again) that the Story Girl, though not beautiful, is nonetheless the sort of charismatic personality that draws everyone to her. "If voices had colour, hers would have been like a rainbow. It made words live. Whatever she said became a breathing reality, not a mere verbal statement or utterance." There's rather a lot of this sort of thing, every time the Story Girl does something, which is of course often, since the book is named after her. Set in the late 1800's, the children are quite a bit (almost unbelievably) more unworldly than tweens and early teens of our own era, and I had to constantly revise my expectations of their knowledge and conduct downwards (quite a bit downwards, in fact). Which I think, even more than the tiresome hyperbole about the Story Girl's attractiveness, is what rings false in this book. It reads like a book written by the childless auntie who just adores the little darlings! and has no real concept of what real children are like. Throughout it refers to their feelings and exploits with a winking sort of smarminess that is just a few shades too twee to be borne.
"And I, even in these late years of irreverence for the dreams of youth, am not in the least ashamed to confess that when I knelt down to say my boyish prayer, I thought of our little furry comrade in his extremity, and prayed as reverently as I knew how for his healing."
This sort of "talking down" to children makes me cringe, and I can't but imagine how much more embarrassing it would be to a child who was reading it. Not a keeper.
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3: Wonderful, warm and... cheap
I love this book and I always have. English is not my native language, I got to know "The Story Girl" in translation - and a good one, too - but I have always longed to read it in English and to find out how Maud herself wrote it. The book is amazing, written from a perspective of an adult, it gives an account of childhood. When I read "The Story Girl" I always get the feeling I'm in someone's memories - slightly blurred and in gold coulours. I love the book and I wholeheartedly recommend it - have you known it was Maud's favourite? The edition isn't beautiful, but it's cheap, and for some people, me included, that matters.
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4: mystical
For entertainment value, I would give this book 3.5*. It was ruined for me, however, because of all the mentions of ghosts, witches, incorrect theology and hints of Eastern mysticism. Even though it was entertaining, I won't read it again because of that. It also seemed rather shallow compared with Anne of Green Gables and other similar books.
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5: Sara Will Mesmerise You!
A charming story by LLM, one of my all time favorite authors, about tow boys who visit for the first time their Canadian cousins and their friends. Sara is a master story teller and keeps the gang rivited throughout the novel with her wonderful storytelling. If you are an avid reader of LMM you may recognize some of the stories in the book, but there is plenty of novel things like the praying contest and the day the world ended. i hope I peaked your interest in this book. This is a book for everyone from child to adult. It's a story you will cherish and read over and over. Pass it on to your children and grandchildren!
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