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A review by sarahanne8382
Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side by L.M. Montgomery
4.0
For me this was one of my more favorite L.M. Montgomery books. While I fell in love with the Anne of Green Gables series as an adolescent, I've since become an even bigger fan of her less puritanical later works, especially her short stories, which is exactly what Among the Shadows: Tales From the Darker Side (edited by Rea Wilmhurst and published in 1990), contains.
If you've read any of Montgomery's other books, you shouldn't be surprised that her fascination with the paranormal led her to write enough stories to fill a volume. In the collection are several traditional ghost stories (such as "Davenport's Story" and "The House Party at Smoky Island"), but there are even more tales of strange coincidences or other "magic" ("A Redeeming Sacrifice," "Detected By Camera," "The Deacon's Painkiller," and "White Magic," among others).
There isn't really much more to describe the book as it exactly follows Montgomery's charming style in her other books. While I can gush on and on about the fine points of her novels, when it comes to short story collections, especially one spanning such a wide range of her career, there are just so many beautifully idiosyncratic portraits painted that you can really only gloss the broadest generalities of her style such as the rural coastal Prince Edward Island (Canada) setting from the late 19th or early 20th century and her charmingly folksy yet educated voice.
Essentially, if you're already a fan of Montgomery, you wont be dissappointed by Among the Shadows. If you haven't read any of her books, but think you might like her work, this would be one of the better books to start with. In general I think her later works, the short stories especially, are less of a shock to current readers than her earlier works originally written for Sunday School periodicals (this is how Anne of Green Gables developed). Some of my other favorite later works of Montgomery are A Tangled Web (1931), The Road to Yesterday (published posthumously in 1974), and The Blue Castle. Also, let's see if I can start a fight among the Anne fans out there by saying that the Emily Series - Emily of New Moon (1923), Emily Climbs (1925), & Emily's Quest (1927) - is better.
If you've read any of Montgomery's other books, you shouldn't be surprised that her fascination with the paranormal led her to write enough stories to fill a volume. In the collection are several traditional ghost stories (such as "Davenport's Story" and "The House Party at Smoky Island"), but there are even more tales of strange coincidences or other "magic" ("A Redeeming Sacrifice," "Detected By Camera," "The Deacon's Painkiller," and "White Magic," among others).
There isn't really much more to describe the book as it exactly follows Montgomery's charming style in her other books. While I can gush on and on about the fine points of her novels, when it comes to short story collections, especially one spanning such a wide range of her career, there are just so many beautifully idiosyncratic portraits painted that you can really only gloss the broadest generalities of her style such as the rural coastal Prince Edward Island (Canada) setting from the late 19th or early 20th century and her charmingly folksy yet educated voice.
Essentially, if you're already a fan of Montgomery, you wont be dissappointed by Among the Shadows. If you haven't read any of her books, but think you might like her work, this would be one of the better books to start with. In general I think her later works, the short stories especially, are less of a shock to current readers than her earlier works originally written for Sunday School periodicals (this is how Anne of Green Gables developed). Some of my other favorite later works of Montgomery are A Tangled Web (1931), The Road to Yesterday (published posthumously in 1974), and The Blue Castle. Also, let's see if I can start a fight among the Anne fans out there by saying that the Emily Series - Emily of New Moon (1923), Emily Climbs (1925), & Emily's Quest (1927) - is better.