The Alpine Path is L.M. Montgomery’s own biography of her life and struggles to get started as a writer. I realized, through reading this, that I’ve been reading her novels for ages without ever really knowing what the author herself was like. I have worshipped her since I was about thirteen years old without any really clear idea of how the woman was as a person. After reading even about fifteen of her books in the span of about two months, I think it was about time that I actually learned about her, and how better than straight from her own mouth?

I’ve read a couple of biographies of L.M. Montgomery, but none of them really captures the essence of how she was. Nothing really could, I don’t think. It was a really nice change to learn directly about her, to hear about her anecdotes from childhood and young adulthood and see just how her experiences through life affected her writing and even appeared in her stories. These stories that she shares in this relatively short autobiography are not in any of the biographical pieces that I’ve read about her, probably due to there personal nature and the necessity of first-person perspective while relating them. After all, told from the third person it would seem rather a regurgitation of her novels and short stories rather than an anecdote of her life.

I think reading about her is quite as fulfilling as reading about her heroines - possibly even better because unlike them, she was a real, living, breathing person who left a tangible mark on the world which hopefully hundreds more generations will experience. ( )