Storm and dissonance

de Jean Mitchell

In the past quarter century, L.M. Montgomery has emerged as the most internationally influential Canadian writer of the first half of the 20th century. This coincided with the publication, starting in 1985, of Montgomery's own personal journals, kept from 1889 to 1942. They revealed an incredibly complex and well-read woman, one as witty as she was tortured. Storm and Dissonance is a collection of inter-related essays that explore how and why Montgomery's 'gentle landscapes and optimistic stories contain undercurrents of anger, malice, relentless gossip, obsession, and violence' that haunt the margins of Montgomery's work before the reader gets to her 'happy endings'. Edited and introduced by Island-born anthropologist Jean Mitchell, the essays enrich the reader's understanding of Montgomery's complex ways of coding experiences and perceptions. This book is important for anyone interested in Montgomery's artistry and in her creation of cultural images that resonate more than one hundred years later.