Emily climbs (by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

(Amazon UK link)

I reread ‘Emily of New Moon’ by Lucy Maud Montgomery in January, and liked it more than I had expected. So I’ve just reread the sequel, ‘Emily climbs’, which I last read in 2005. As with the first book, it’s set in Canada, around a hundred years ago in the 1920s. 

Emily is fourteen at the start of the book, just as friendly and sensitive as she was in the first book. She’s still living with her two aunts and a second cousin, and still writes, both fiction and non-fiction, whenever she gets the chance. Her school teacher is an excellent critic, giving her extra attention and commentary because he can see that she has a lot of potential.

The chance comes up for Emily to go to a high school, so far away that she has to have lodgings. It turns out that it’s only about seven miles from New Moon, but in those days of horses and traps, and no public transport, it’s too far for her to go daily. So she goes to stay with her Aunt Ruth, who makes even her Aunt Elizabeth look genial and understanding. 

There’s not a whole lot of plot in this book; like the better known ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books by this author, most chapters are complete in themselves, each one with a specific incident or description of something happening as Emily starts to grow up.  The book covers her three years in high school, with many forays back to New Moon.  

She makes new friends and continues spending as much time as she can with her former friends. Ilse, Perry and Teddy are all at high school with her, although Aunt Ruth will not allow any boys to visit, and only allows Ilse under sufferance. 

Emily is highly imaginative, and determined to make her living as a writer. She has to promise Aunt Elizabeth that she will avoid writing any fiction during her high school years. This is very difficult for her - and I have never really understood what her aunts had against writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. But others think it’s good for Emily. So instead she writes journal entries - some of which are shared in the book - and poetry. 

So we see her starting, tentatively, to send samples of her work to different magazines and other publications. Most lead to rejections, but she’s ecstatic when she gets any acceptance, even if there’s no payment involved. I assume that this section of Emily’s life, at least, reflects the author’s own experience. It certainly feels authentic. 

Emily is quite believable, too. She has a spark of independence, and isn’t always as polite or tactful as she should be. She does things she shouldn’t do on occasion. In general I don’t like the ‘author asides’ which books of this era, and earlier, tended to insert. But in this case, they’re quite amusing as the author pretends to distance herself from her heroine. 

I have to admit to skimming slightly over some of the more descriptive passages. Emily’s imagination and the way she anthropomorphises trees felt a bit overdone, and these sections add nothing to the story. But on the whole, I enjoyed the rest. It gives a good picture of what life might have been like in the era, with a realistic look into life from the perspective of a maturing teenager.

Recommended as a sequel to ‘Emily of New Moon’; it stands alone, but a lot of the characters were introduced in the first book, and I think it would be quite confusing to read this one without having read the first. 

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