Buddy reading and other coordinated challenges are a good excuse to read the sort of books one doesn’t always get to, especially the more obscure classics. This was my third Lucy Maud Montgomery novel within a year and a bit, and my first contribution to Ali’s ongoing year with Margaret Drabble.
{SPOILERS IN BOTH OF THE FOLLOWING REVIEWS}
Kilmeny of the Orchard by L. M. Montgomery (1910)
I’ve participated in Canadian bloggers Naomi of Consumed by Ink and Sarah Emsley’s readalongs of three Montgomery works now. The previous two were Jane of Lantern Hill and The Story Girl. This sweet but rather outdated novella reminded me more of the latter (no surprise as it was published just a year before it) because of the overall sense of lightness and the male perspective, which isn’t what those familiar with the Anne and Emily books might expect from Montgomery.
Eric Marshall travels to Prince Edward Island one May to be the temporary schoolmaster in Lindsay, filling in for an ill friend. At his graduation from Queenslea College, his cousin David Baker had teased him about his apparent disinterest in girls. He arrives on the island to an early summer idyll and soon wanders into an orchard where a beautiful young woman is playing a violin.
This is, of course, Kilmeny Gordon, her first name from a Scottish ballad by James Hogg, and it’s clear she will be the love interest. However, there are a couple of impediments to the romance. One is resistance from Kilmeny’s guardians, the strict aunt and uncle who have cared for her since her wronged mother’s death. But the greater obstacle is Kilmeny’s background – illegitimacy plus a disability that everyone bar Eric views as insuperable: she is mute (or, as the book has it, “dumb”). She hears and understands perfectly well, but communicates via writing on a slate.
There is interesting speculation as to whether her condition is psychological or magically inherited from her late mother, who had taken a vow of silence. Conveniently, cousin David is a doctor specializing in throat and voice problems, so assures Eric and the Gordons that nothing is physically preventing Kilmeny from speech. But she refuses to marry Eric until she can speak. The scene in which she fears for his life and calls out to save him is laughably contrived. The language around disability is outmoded. It’s also uncomfortable that the story’s villain, an adopted Gordon cousin, is characterized only by his Italian heritage.
Like The Story Girl, I found this fairly twee, with an unfortunate focus on beauty (“‘Kilmeny’s mouth is like a love-song made incarnate in sweet flesh,’ said Eric enthusiastically”), and marriage as the goal of life. But it was still a pleasant read, especially for the descriptions of a Canadian spring. (Downloaded from Project Gutenberg) #ReadingKilmeny
The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble (1969)
This was Drabble’s fourth novel; I’ve read the previous three and preferred two of them to this (A Summer Bird-Cage is fab). The setup is similar to The Garrick Year, which I read last year for book club, in that the focus is on a young mother of two who embarks on an affair. When we meet Jane Gray she is awaiting the birth of her second child. Her husband, Malcolm, walked out a few weeks ago, but she has the midwife and her cousin Lucy to rely on. Lucy and her husband, James, trade off staying over with Jane as she recovers from childbirth. James is particularly solicitous and, one night, joins Jane in bed.
At this point there is a stark shift from third person to first person as Jane confesses that she’s been glossing over the complexities of the situation; sleeping with one’s cousin’s husband is never going to be without emotional fallout. “It won’t, of course, do: as an account, I mean, of what took place”; “Lies, lies, it’s all lies. A pack of lies.” The novel continues to alternate between first and third person as Jane gives us glimpses into her uneasy family-making. I found myself bored through much of it, only perking back up for the meta stuff and the one climactic event. In a way it’s a classic tale of free will versus fate, including the choice of how to frame what happens.
I am no longer capable of inaction – then I will invent a morality that condones me.
It wasn’t so, it wasn’t so. I am getting tired of all this Freudian family nexus, I want to get back to that schizoid third-person dialogue.
The narrative tale. The narrative explanation. That was it, or some of it. I loved James because he was what I had never had: because he drove too fast: because he belonged to my cousin: because he was kind to his own child
(What intriguing punctuation there!) The fast driving and obsession with cars is unsubtle foreshadowing: James nearly dies in a car accident on the way to the ferry to Norway. Jane and her children, Laurie and baby Bianca, are in the car but unhurt. This was the days when seatbelts weren’t required, apparently. “It would have been so much simpler if he had been dead: so natural a conclusion, so poetic in its justice.” The Garrick Year, too, has a near-tragedy involving a car. Like many an adultery story, both novels ask whether an affair changes everything, or nothing. Infidelity and the parenting of young children together don’t amount to the most scintillating material, but it is appealing to see Drabble experimenting with how to tell a story. See also Ali’s review. (Secondhand – Alnwick charity shopping)
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Thanks so much for joining us, Rebecca. “Sweet but rather outdated” is a great way to describe the novel. It’s a strange book. I had remembered only a few things about it from when I read it around age ten, and wasn’t really sure what to expect when I started rereading. I agree that the descriptions of spring are a highlight.
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Thanks for the excuse to read more LMM. Do you know what the next one will be?
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We haven’t talked about that yet–any suggestions?
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I’ve heard good things about The Blue Castle. I’ve never read Chronicles of Avonlea. And I’d be up for rereading any of the Anne and Emily books!
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Good to know–thanks! We’ll keep that in mind. It has just occurred to me that Emily Climbs would be a good choice for next year, since 2025 is the 100th anniversary. We read The Blue Castle in 2017, and thus probably won’t reread for a while. Naomi and I met online through an Anne of Green Gables readalong some years before that, which is what got us started on hosting our own, but that’s also why we haven’t been rereading the Anne books recently. It would be lovely to go back to them, though. And I haven’t read Chronicles of Avonlea in many years, so that would be fun to try.
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Lots of good options there! The Blue Castle is also on Project Gutenberg, so I can read that on my own time.
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The Blue Castle is wonderful! One of my favourite LMM novels.
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I loved LMM as a kid but have sadly realised that the only LMM books I find readable as an adult are the wonderful Emily trilogy.
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I’ve enjoyed discovering some of her lesser-known books. Jane of Lantern Hill was very good, and enough like the Anne books that I think rereading those would work out for me. I recoiled from the melancholy of the Emily books as a young teen, but I bet I’d like them better now.
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I was obviously a melancholy child 🙂
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Oh dear no to the Montgomery. That quote about her mouth is hideous. The Waterfall actually does sound interesting, but perhaps a bit tortured; I can see why you got bored partway through.
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Do you know Drabble at all? I’ve had mixed experience with her novels, but some are very good.
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Really, no, not at all! I’ve only ever read Byatt.
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You were so much more diplomatic about Kilmeny than I was, ha ha! I found it laughably awful. I was reading passages out loud to my co-worker and she was aghast. But I’m glad to have read it, because in general I really like Montgomery’s work.
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I was generous and gave it 2.5 stars 😉
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[…] Buddy Reads: Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery & The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble […]
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Oh, yes, the nature quotations in those early LMM novels are still quite good. I reread all the early ones about a decade ago, and I just can’t bring myself to revisit them, even though I’m still quite nostagic about LMM generally.
Great observation about that punctuation in the Drabble quotation; I still haven’t gotten to my Drabble reading/rereading this year, but I persist in the imagined future in which I join Ali at long last. heheh
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I’m still up for reading her Arnold Bennett biog. later in the year, if you are.
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I remember we talked about Drabble but were we actually planning to read her bio? It’s a reference-only in the Toronto system, and I don’t think that copy would be available through ILL when I’m up north either, but I can investigate.
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It’s the only book I currently own by her, that’s why I brought it up. But others would be obtainable from the university library.
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Well in theory I’m game. I know we’ve both already read and enjoyed her jigsaw memoir, so it’s really the only NF that remains from her oeuvre too?
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[…] Buddy Reads: Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery & The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble […]
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Overall, I think you were very kind to Kilmeny of the Orchard. You must be a true LMM fan! I do find it strange to read one of her books from a male point of view – I wonder if that messed things up for her a bit. Maybe she was trying to get into men’s heads and imagined that beauty is their only criteria. Maybe it was! But I doubt they were all as poetic about it as Eric was. Lol
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You and Sarah must have some fondness for it, to have chosen it for buddy reading? 🙂 I’ve enjoyed exploring LMM’s more obscure works.
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We have a fondness for Maud. It’s fun going back and re-reading her books one at a time!
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[…] The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble […]
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