The Road to Yesterday

I have already written of my love affair with the Anne of Green Gables series and of course earlier this year I read L.M. Montgomery's Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, so I seem to be on a bit of a Montgomery kick lately. The Road to Yesterday did not disappoint - a series of short stories, each centered around a family known to the Blythes but never quite measuring up to them, this is a quick read. For the most part it is all sweetness and light, at least in as much as stories so densely populated with old maids and orphans can be considered as such. (It is also not entirely surprising that Wikipedia notes, "For a woman who had given the world so much joy [life] was mostly an unhappy one." I suppose Montgomery knew of what she wrote.) Even so, there is no shortage of happy endings for characters she takes such pains to create.

By and large, there's not much substance to The Road to Yesterday, but I mean that in the best possible way. This is escapism reading. Montgomery has a gift for transporting her reader where she wants and with whom she wants and I felt myself fully drawn into the homes and lives of these lovely characters. Anne, her husband Gilbert, and their children are so artfully woven in that the reader doesn't realize that Road is, in many ways, simply a continuation of the Anne series, told from different viewpoints, but mining much of the same ground. This is a delightful little read for anyone who has ever thrilled at Anne's adventures or been entranced by her world.