The Finished Story

by L.M. Montgomery, L.M. Montgomery

Unknown Binding

About the author

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.

Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Nov. 30, 1874. She came to live at Leaskdale, north of Uxbridge Ontario, after her wedding with Rev. Ewen Macdonald on July 11, 1911. She had three children and wrote close to a dozen books while she was living in the Leaskdale Manse before the family moved to Norval, Ontario in 1926. She died in Toronto April 24, 1942 and was buried at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

So yes, if or hopefully when you read Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1912 The Finished Story you will likely notice that the premise of a spinster feeling that her life has been soured because of her lover seemingly abandoning her decades previously and later to her joy finding out that this has indeed not been the case is definitely very much similar to her 1910 Miss Sally’s Letter (and indeed, even how the fact that Miss Sally’s and Miss Sylvia’s beaus did in fact truly love them is later discovered by a male family member of the individuals in question).

But I do have to admit that personally, I have always found Miss Sylvia of The Finished Story considerably more positively and like-ably described by L.M. Montgomery’s pen than Miss Sally of Miss Sally’s Letter. Because even though both Sylvia and Sally are depicted by Montgomery as being very much devastated by their beaus seemingly falling out of love with them (and then of course later being absolutely ecstatic when this is absolutely proven to be false) I really do appreciate how in The Finished Story Miss Sylvia does not let her disappointment and her pain of seemingly lost love poison her mind against the world and in particular against all men in general. Which Miss Sally clearly does in Miss Sally’s Letter, and yes, it always does kind of bother me whenever I reread Miss Sally’s Letter how Miss Sally actively has such a huge amount of hatred in her heart for all men in principle just because she thinks her lover had been false, something that I do very much enjoy reading not being the case in The Finished Story, where Miss Sylvia does not once consider men as a group, as a gender as potential cads and faithless just because of her own painful experience with Alan Grant.

Therefore, a solid four star rating for The Finished Story and certainly a trifle less personally frustrating for me than Miss Sally’s Letter (although I also do think that Lucy Maud Montgomery making Alan Grant in The Finished Story take the conscious decision to not tell Sylvia how much he loves her because of his having consumption to be more than a bit presumptuous and in fact bordering on misplaced chivalry and as such actually considerably more problematic in every way than Stephen Merritt’s never received epistle in Miss Sally’s Letter).

[Katja Labonté · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars & 4/10 hearts. What a sweet story this was! Poor Miss Sally was a sweetheart and so was A. And I really liked the narrator too. It was just a little story but very heartwarming and humorous and enjoyable. <3

A Favourite Beautiful Quote: “When I arrived at Sweetwater I found it moist and chill with the sunny moisture and teasing chill of our Canadian springs. They are long and fickle and reluctant, these springs of ours, but, oh, the unnamable charm of them! There was something even in the red buds of the maples at Sweetwater and in the long, smoking stretches of hillside fields that sent a thrill through my veins.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: “I was reading one of my stories to Miss Sylvia. In my own excuse I must allege that she tempted me to do it. I did not go around with manuscripts under my arm, inflicting them on defenceless females.”

[Alayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely tale of long-ago love lost, and the story completed in another generation.