4 stars; I really liked it
This book was given to me by my friend Emma, like a few others, and I’ve had it on my shelf for several months now. It was only when I finally picked it up to read it that I realized the author was Lucy Maud Montgomery (and I recognized that author)!
Read: Apr. 5, 2025
Genre: Classic, Romance
Audience: General, Adult
Book contains: manipulation, drinking, lying, heart disease, near death experience
Purchase a copy from Indigo.ca
At twenty-nine years old, Valancy learns that she has only a year to live and so decides to stop trying only to live to please her stifling family. She moves out to care for a girl named Cecily, and in doing so, gets to know the town rapscallion, Barney Snaith, who has rumours running rampant about him.
I’ve never read any of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s works before, but I really enjoyed this one! It’s a bit of a diversion for her, being (apparently) her only book with an adult protagonist and set outside of Prince Edward Island, but I think it was really good! I especially loved some of the humour in this book, despite it not being a comedy.
This whole novel is told in forty-five relatively short chapters, and beyond that, there’s nothing much special about the structure. It’s told from third person point of view, and while the narrative mainly follows Valancy, it does shift to her family and their reactions to her “odd” behaviour as well.
Unlike Saturday, Sunday was a wet and dreary day, so I stayed in to read this book. I listened along to the audiobook I found on Spotify and followed along in the Arcturus copy I got from my friend. I was a little thrown by the fact that there were different volunteer narrators for each chapter (at least five different people switching), some of which whose voices I liked better than others.
As soon as she shrugs off the shackles of expectation from her family, Valancy becomes the sassiest troublemaker ever. Her family actually thinks she’s gone insane despite the fact that she’s finally just speaking her mind. I love this sense of freedom she has; she’s left behind a guaranteed future in a nice house for a working life, and yet she’s happy for the first time in her life. Her family are all stifling in their own ways, her mother is a strict taskmaster, her Uncle Benjamin is always making jokes at her expense, her cousin Olive is beautiful and always the first pick of everything. Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks (so to speak) are Roaring Abel, a drunkard and a carpenter, his daughter Cecily, who is shunned for having a child out of wedlock, and Barney Snaith, who is a mystery around town and thus has rumours following him like his own shadow.
All her life, Valancy has been convinced that she’ll never get married because she’s never caught a man’s eye, but now that she’s thrown off her shackles, new life has been breathed into her. She’s finally alive, finally making friends—and maybe finding romance along the way. The relationship with her family becomes more and more strained as the book goes on, until they cut her off entirely, and she doesn’t even care, which is liberating for her, because she’s finally made some real friends.
Overall, this book was beautifully written, but I especially appreciate the shifts in the writing as the story progresses. The beginning is bland and grey, like her life, but as soon as she leaves her family, the world opens up and becomes so much more beautiful. Throughout, as she’s leading a reckless life, the writing reflects that, but then at the end, when the world becomes unbalanced around her, it seems to speed up, and while she doesn’t know how to react, the reader is given a slightly disjointed narrative to match. Really good subtlety in the writing!
The pacing was excellent. We kept moving forward, Valancy taking steps to rebel, then help others, then live. She’s constantly looking to live her believed last year of life to its fullest, to finally experience what living is supposed to be, and this constantly moves the plot along. Except for the ending, in which things are happening to her, and she’s not sure how to react to them.
This is an absolute hoot of a book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it!
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