Everything L.M. Montgomery and how to build a deeper reading roster

KATE SCARTH: You know, and again, not everything has to go back to L.M. Montgomery, but I can't help it.

ANNE BOGEL: But it might in this episode.

KATE: It might.

ANNE: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.

[00:00:40] Readers, I'm so excited to tell you about a live event happening this spring. On May 7th, I'll be joining Laurie Frankel in conversation at Parnassus in Nashville on tour for her new book, Enormous Wings. I'd love to see you there. Get all the information at the link in our show notes or at parnassusbooks.net.

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Readers, I'm sure many of you will well understand our team's excitement when we saw today's guest submission land in our inboxes. Today, I'm talking with Kate Scarth, chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

We're going to talk more about Kate's work today, but in addition to her academic role, Kate has partnered with the L.M. Montgomery Institute, which she describes as a hub of the international Montgomery community and was part of the advisory committee for the Green Gables Interpretive Center.

[00:01:47] I was so interested in hearing more about Montgomery's life and work and also Kate's life and work and about some of her favorite Montgomery retellings and homages, but our main focus today is on Kate's reading life. She's interested in building out a deep reading roster for the kinds of books she especially enjoys. Books featuring literary women, books where an investigation or detective work is a big part of the story, books that center on a house, and nonfiction about creative and artistic women in history.

She's also very interested in finding more books with magical realism and ghosts, and had some interesting thoughts to share in this vein connecting Stephen King and L.M. Montgomery, if you can believe it. Stick around to hear more. Let's get to it.

Kate, welcome to the show.

KATE: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I've been a fan of the podcast for years, so it's such a delight to be here.

[00:02:37] ANNE: Oh, well, thank you. I'm so excited to chat. And I have to tell you when you wrote in to our submissions inbox about your work as chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies, which it makes me happy to know I live in a world where such a role exists, our team members who review those all said, "Hey, I think now's a good time for a conversation about Anne." Not just about Anne, but I'm happy to talk a little bit about Anne of Green Gables today. I've been looking forward to this.

KATE: Well, I love how often you mention L.M. Montgomery on the podcast and on the blog.

ANNE: Do I?

KATE: Yeah, you do. Yes.

ANNE: Have I said out loud how much I've been wanting to reread specifically The Blue Castle recently? But I'm sure that's just going to set me down all of them. But I have to finish my Summer Reading Guide reading first. That's where I am right now at the moment we're recording. I was not aware I did that, though.

KATE: Right. Well, and if you need an added incentive to read The Blue Castle this year, it is 100 years since it was published. So it's a good year to read it in.

[00:03:34] ANNE: Is it really? Okay, well, I have a beautiful edition in my library. I was going to say with my name on it, not literally. Unless Anne counts.

KATE: Yeah, that's right. But yes, no, you absolutely, you are a good booster for L.M. Montgomery. And yeah, the position, I mean, I went to PEI for the first time, Prince Edward Island, where Montgomery lived and the place she mostly wrote about. And yeah, 8-year-old me was so excited to go to the land of Anne. But I definitely could not have conceived that the chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies was the job that existed, or that I would be that person one day.

ANNE: So if you visited PEI when you were eight, where did you grow up?

KATE: I grew up in Newfoundland. So another island province on the east coast of Canada, but very different. So if PEI is like gently rolling hills, very pastoral, agricultural, Newfoundland is rocky and has mostly relied on fishing and now oil and gas, but very much a study in contrast, even though they're kind of all part of Atlantic Canada. So it really felt like a different world to me.

[00:04:42] ANNE: Oh, I love your introduction was so young. Okay, Kate, tell us a little more about yourself. We always want to give our readers a glimpse of who we're talking to on the podcast.

KATE: I am a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island. And as the chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies, I work closely with the L.M. Montgomery Institute. And we kind of have two main goals. One is to support research into Montgomery's life, work, legacy, context. And we do that through a journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, which is online, and then a conference every two years.

One thing that's really exciting about the work with the Montgomery Institute is how international it is. So we usually have about 15 different countries represented in the presenters at the conference. We're very focused on public engagement as well. So whether that's locally with the National Park, where there's the Green Gables House that you can visit, or with some of the international scholars or tourism operators, or just any of the many people who have an interest in Montgomery.

[00:05:41] ANNE: Kate, I'm so curious how your reading life is impacted by the work you do by day.

KATE: I've always been a really big reader. I definitely return to Montgomery's books. I mean, one of the things that's been really exciting for me about the role is just learning about what an artist Montgomery was. She kept scrapbooks. She was a photographer. She kept journals for decades. So there's a lot to read that either she produced or has been written about her.

I've gotten really interested in books that are adaptations of her work or homages in some way to her writing and even to books that just reference Anne of Green Gables once. I'm really interested in kind of the cultural shorthand that that novel represents. So certainly some of my reading is Montgomery-focused. I've never been a collector, but I think for the first time in my life, I am going to start collecting books that have some link to Montgomery.

[00:06:37] There's a local kids’ bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia called Woozles and they're kind of helping me get set up there. But in terms of other reading, certainly I think that there are links back to Montgomery in terms of a lot of the things that I enjoy. So I love books about houses, for example, women's stories. So you can see that there are links back to Montgomery. I was reading her at such a young age and loving her at such a young age that probably those influences were inevitable.

ANNE: That's so interesting. We are going to get more into your specific loves and make, for better or worse listeners, non-Montgomery recommendations at the end of this episode. But I feel like it's our responsibility to ask you some L.M. Montgomery-related questions while we have the opportunity. I would love to hear more about how Anne of Green Gables is used as cultural shorthand. Now, you and I were just talking about how Anne of Green Gables is mentioned often in literature. I almost said fiction, but it may be in literature. And it's meant to convey a certain something about a character in the book. I imagine that that's what they're reading. But would you take it from here? What do you observe readers to be using that as shorthand for?

[00:07:54] KATE: Yeah. So some of the things are what you might expect. It's meant to emphasize that someone is bookish or studious or imaginative or maybe a bit hyperactive or chatty. So these characteristics that we might associate with Anne of Green Gables.

But sometimes the references are negative as well. I recently did a post on Instagram about references to Anne of Green Gables by writers from Newfoundland, the island where I grew up. And in some cases, it's very much like we're from the same part of the world. And of course, L.M. Montgomery influenced me, like Lisa Moore, the novelist, talks about that. But then sometimes it's like, well, you know, it's real life here on Newfoundland, like where it's harsher and Prince Edward Island, life is easy. Anne of Green Gables is associated with tourism and summer. And so it can be very dismissive as well to kind of show like, well, what we're doing over here is like gritty and real life.

[00:09:02] And that's kind of interesting too, actually, because it goes back to how in the 1920s and 30s, modernist critics started to be very dismissive of Montgomery's work. They wanted to be producing their own F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and showing that Canadians could do modernist too. And that was not what Montgomery was doing. And so she was really used as like, almost like the punching bag for like, this is not the direction we want Canadian literature to go in. We don't want it to be sentimental and for children. We want it to be real life.

ANNE: I imagine you have some thoughts about the enduring appeal, though.

KATE: Absolutely. I think that readers and fans always loved Montgomery's work, you know, no matter what these critics were saying, and people continue to read Anne of Green Gables and other books by Montgomery. But it was very distressing to her, even though she had a lot of success, was a celebrity in her lifetime, and was very interested in promoting Canadian writers. She helped establish the Canadian Authors Association. So then for these modernist writers to turn around and exclude her from the national stage in many ways was very difficult. But yeah, we remember her name now and we don't remember many of her critics.

[00:10:19] ANNE: You mentioned one of your interests right now is tracking down books that are adaptations or homages. I imagine readers would be interested in hearing a standout or two, whether or not that's a personal favorite for you that falls in that category.

KATE: One of my absolute favorites is Heather Fawcett's The Grace of Wild Things, which is just I think an amazing work of art itself. A middle grade book that is Anne of Green Gables meets Hansel and Gretel. I mean, I like it as a book in itself. It's a great story and great characters and a great sense of place, but I love that she draws out the dark elements that are present in Montgomery's writing.

I think they're there in terms of Anne's backstory as an orphan, but in other books, she explores that dark side in more detail. Like in the Emily of New Moon series, Emily has the sixth sense, for example. So there's that kind of Scottish supernatural element at play in some of her work too. So I like that Heather Fawcett draws that out.

[00:11:22] I love Anna James's book, Tilly and the Book Wanderers. And Tilly actually gets to jump into Anne of Green Gables and go to the Avonlea schools. That's a really fun one, I think, that highlights the magic of books.

Actually, just like a book that references Anne of Green Gables briefly, Kate Quinn's new book, The Astral Library, allows people to escape their very difficult lives into a book of their choice. There's this one little girl who's been abused and her choice is to go into Anne of Green Gables, which is very powerful, right, like that book as an escape, which it has been for so many people kind of metaphorically. And then for this little girl in Kate Quinn's book, Anne of Green Gables is a literal escape from her life.

ANNE: Thank you for sharing those. What do you like to read for your own sake? I certainly hope you enjoy your work reading, but I imagine not all of it, not all your personal reading, has to do with Anne or PEI.

[00:12:25] KATE: That's right, yeah. I read really widely. I really enjoy reading the classics. My PhD was on Jane Austen and writers of that period. So I love anything like 18th or 19th century. I love a mystery novel. I've been doing some challenges on Instagram, like the Dickens December, last December, 2025. I love A Christmas Carol. I love reading that every December. I'm doing a new challenge, 26 classics in 26. And I do like reading nonfiction and listening to nonfiction works really well for me. So stories about women, again, the 18th and 19th century. I like to have multiple books on the go at the same time so I can have options according to how I'm feeling.

ANNE: Kate, you mentioned in your submission that there are a couple of things that really keep you on track in your reading life. Anything you want to tell us about?

[00:13:25] KATE: Yes. Well, I really do like keeping track of the books that I read on Goodreads. I find having the challenge number and watching the number creep up really satisfying. Because it's funny. Like I've always been a reader. I played hockey for one year when I was in grade four. And like for decades after, parents of the other kids on the hockey team, which like I'd run into them in the supermarket and they'd be like talking about me and all my hockey gear reading in the hockey dressing room. So it's like I never needed motivation to reading, but somehow the Goodreads challenge does really help.

And of course, it's just nice to be able to go back. Like, especially when I'm recommending books to people, I can never remember the titles, but there they are. So that helps. And I'm really enjoying doing the challenges on Instagram. There's just something about reading with other people. That's really nice. And seeing what other people think about books.

[00:14:17] One thing about Goodreads that I like too, is I love reading one-star reviews. Whether or not I liked the book, I think they can often be really insightful because you get a sense of like, "Oh yeah, that's true. That didn't really work with that book." That can be fun.

ANNE: Is that guidance, entertainment or both for you?

KATE: I think both. And I mean, sometimes it makes me really angry because I'm like, no, they totally missed what this book is trying to do, right?

ANNE: Yes. That, or I feel like this is happening less, but UPS delivered it to the wrong house, one star.

KATE: Oh yeah, that's right. And particularly on Amazon that happens. It's like, yeah, that's not really about the book.

ANNE: I'm so curious to hear how your professional work might inform your reading life. What I'm imagining is you are very steeped in the life and work of one of our major artists of the 20th century in Canada, widely read in the US and widely read around the world. I really loved especially the international tidbits in your great course.

[00:15:21] Actually, would you tell everybody about that for a moment? I'm so glad I listened to the life and work of L.M. Montgomery lecture series that you did for the Great Courses before we spoke today because it was pure fun, mostly Kate, but I do feel like I have a better handle on what you do. What I'm really curious about, not so much as what they will find there, because those who want to find it will certainly find it, is what are some of the misconceptions? What are some things that people are often shocked to learn as you see it, or that you find that we get wrong, or that the culture gets wrong about the artist and her works? Because I've said Anne as shorthand many times, but L.M. Montgomery wrote many books besides the Anne of Green Gables series.

KATE: Absolutely, yeah. So that would definitely, I think, be one of the misconceptions is that people think that she just wrote this one novel, Anne of Green Gables, and that people have misconceptions about that book, right? It's beloved by many, and yet I think it's easy to dismiss, especially if you just have a superficial understanding, whether you've gone to PEI and just seen people running around with the straw hats and the red braids.

[00:16:25] It's easy to have misconceptions about the character and then just to think that that's Montgomery's only creation. And something that I have just found so interesting about being in this job is learning about what an artist and creator she was across her life. So she had a camera in the 1890s in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, which would have been really unusual. So she really had a powerful visual imagination.

She was kind of a conscious magpie. She loved to collect tidbits about her life. She kept scrapbooks. She wrote poems. She wrote 21 novels. She wrote hundreds of short stories. Very astute businesswoman, you know, knew what publications would want to publish what kind of stories. So she would be very strategic about that. She loved fashion. She liked to be the best dressed person in a room. She took great pride in her household management as well and baking and cooking and loved to eat. And so, yeah, I think that that is something that's just so fascinating about her. It's so much more than Anne of Green Gables.

[00:17:29] ANNE: And I think also that people make a lot of assumptions about Montgomery herself.

KATE: Yeah. So in the 1980s, her journals, so her diaries, which she kept for decades, started to be published. There are a lot of challenges in those. You know, her marriage was at times difficult. She and her husband both had mental health issues. There was a lot of anguish, especially as her life went on. And so people were kind of shocked that the author of this sunny story could have had such darkness in her life.

I mean, I would say that, and, you know, scholars have talked about this, that one of Montgomery's strengths is that she balances the darkness and the light. And the lightness works so well. You know, Anne transforms this community and Marilla and Matthew, but, you know, there's this darkness in her past. And that darkness and light is more apparent in other books.

[00:18:23] So people were kind of amazed at learning about this complex woman behind Anne of Green Gables. And then it also just allowed people to kind of see that complexity in the books as well. Her journals are in many ways, creative works too. Like she went back and copied them out and re-edited them so we can see them as kind of a great kind of literary output as well.

ANNE: And she was very much on board with them being published one day. Do I remember you saying that?

KATE: That's absolutely true. Yeah, because she was a celebrity pretty much as soon as Anne of Green Gables was published. She did a lot of public speaking because of her books, got a lot of fan letters. So she knew there would be interest in her journals. So she went back and wrote them. But, you know, sometimes she leaves things in, like nasty things she says about people, and you think, "Oh, you know, why didn't she edit that out?"

Laura Robinson, a Montgomery scholar, says, we don't know for sure sometimes if a description, say, of a sunset appeared first in the novel or in the journal. You'd assume it was in the journal and then she put it in the novel, but maybe she liked it so much in the novel that then it ended up in the journal.

[00:19:33] So they're not exactly... I mean, I guess diaries are never... you know, it's a person's version of reality, but they're kind of this great literary work themselves. I mean, I do find that there can be a bit of titillation around, especially in terms of how her life ended, that... when I was doing the Audible, the great course, The Life and World of L.M. Montgomery, I wanted to make sure that that wasn't too central. We have such better understanding of mental health too, but the interesting thing about her is what she created. And of course, I mean, it's all the more powerful because she dealt with such hardship in her life, but I think it's really important not to lose track of the fact that she was this amazing artist.

ANNE: I appreciate you speaking to that. And it's so interesting to hear you talk about the way she edited her journals, because when I had heard her journals referred to as literature in the past, I took that to mean quality and purpose. I was not at all thinking about the process by which they were written. That's so interesting.

[00:20:37] KATE: It really is interesting. In the Audible that you listened to that I did, I talk about, for example, her experience of hearing about the Halifax explosion, which was this really devastating collision between two ships in World War I, and how even that, she kind of... you know, she's able to turn an event like that into this very personal, psychological experience of how she coped throughout that day.

So they are a literature, absolutely in the way that you were thinking about them in terms of her crafting place and character, but there's also this, I guess, imaginative editing network as well. And they're also just really interesting because you can almost think of them as kind of experimental because she'll do these long diary entries where it's her kind of revisiting the Cavendish of her past. So Cavendish is where she grew up and dreamt up Anne of Green Gables, and it's kind of the real-life counterpart we could say to Avonlea in the Anne books.

[00:21:38] But she'll just kind of recreate with words, like every turn in the road and the tree and who lived here. So she had this amazing imagination and you could almost see it's like she's creating this map with words. So she's doing a lot of different kind of interesting things in the journals.

ANNE: What would you say to anyone contemplating a trip of their own to PEI and surrounds?

KATE: Well, there is an online literary tour that you can follow. There are many sites tied to Anne of Green Gables. So, yes, I would definitely encourage anyone who's enjoyed the books, make sure... go to Green Gables. The Interpretive Centre has been recently redone and there's a lot of information about Montgomery and her world.

You can visit the house that has been known since Montgomery's lifetime as Green Gables. You can go to the site where she grew up, where she wrote Anne of Green Gables. There are sites all over the island in Bedeque and elsewhere where she taught school. There are many sites to explore. And then that's kind of nice too because if you're dragging along family members who might not be sure if Anne of Green Gables is fit to eat, there might be ways into it for them. Beautiful beaches in PEI and really good food as well.

[00:22:54] ANNE: And we should tell readers that in March, 2023, we hosted an episode with Rosalynn in which she had recently returned from an intergenerational book pilgrimage to PEI that was motivated 100% by Anne of Green Gables and her and her daughter's love for it. Yeah, listen in, readers. That's called "Books so nice you’ll want to read them twice".

KATE: That's great.

ANNE: Okay, are you ready to get more into the books that you love and don't?

KATE: Sounds good.

ANNE: You know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one that you don't, and what you've been reading lately, and we'll hear what you're into these days and what you're interested in reading next.

KATE: Great.

ANNE: How did you choose the ones you brought to the show today?

KATE: I just chose them really quickly. I think that that was important not to overthink it. I chose them and I... like thinking about them before coming on here, I can see that there are quite a few links between them, which I think will be good for our conversation.

[00:23:55] ANNE: Ooh, that maybe you didn't realize at first?

KATE: Mm-hmm, absolutely.

ANNE: Well, I'm excited to hear it. What's the first book you love?

KATE: The Postcard by Anne Berest. In this book, a woman receives a postcard with four names on it. And then 15 years later, her daughter decides, with the mother's help, to track down the people who are listed on the postcard. And they traveled to many places in Europe. And it turns out that these were relatives of theirs who were victims of the Holocaust.

I think one of the things that I love about this book, I guess the main thing, is this honoring of people whose lives were taken from them. And it's this honoring through the book and through the search for them and recuperating their lives and their stories and their names.

I've realized that, and this is true with all of the books that I've chosen today, how much I enjoy when that search, like the research or the exploration of the material that becomes the book when it's foregrounded in the book itself. I just find that really compelling.

[00:25:03] ANNE: Duly noted. I'm also interested in hearing what the emotional experience was like for you. I'm wondering what kind of timber or seeking out or what range, what different kinds may appeal to you?

KATE: It's such a good question because I listened to this book on audio. My daughter was only about an year and a half old. And there are some absolutely excruciating moments involving children separated from their parents. I'm not sure how I was able to carry on with this book, but I did. I did really just find it so compelling. Maybe because there are all these terrible things, but the book is always focused on the ties that bind, like the family, the love, and recuperating these people's stories. And so maybe that's a reason why.

Because I know, for example, I tried to read Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, I couldn't read Hamnet in that moment. Or Colson Whitehead's book, The Underground Railroad. That's when I couldn't read when my daughter was small. But The Postcard for some reason, I don't know, it doesn't necessarily make sense because it is harrowing emotionally.

[00:26:15] ANNE: I'm thinking now about how it's not just the reader is at a remove from the characters because that is how books work, but also the investigator, I feel like that should get air quotes, in The Postcard is also removed from those that she is researching. It's a little abstract to her. I wonder, is there something there?

KATE: Yes, whereas in Hamnet is direct experience, right? What is happening? What happens to the child? Yeah, maybe that is true, that in some ways, like me as the reader and the investigator, we're like on the same side of the fence looking over at something that's already happened a long time ago, maybe? I don't know if because I listened to it in audio, that helped create some distance as well.

ANNE: Oh, that's interesting. I was just thinking that does create a sense of immediacy, perhaps.

KATE: Yeah, those things are funny. It's hard to put my finger on it.

[00:27:18] ANNE: I will pay attention to what the emotional content and weight is of the books that we end up recommending to you today. And if necessary, we can explore how they're going to feel and if that's actually a good pick for you at this season in your life.

KATE: Right, yes. I feel like I'm at a season in my life where I think I can handle weightier emotional things. But yeah, sometimes maybe it's a day-to-day or week-to-week thing, right?

ANNE: And it also might depend on the balance, just thinking of what you said about the content of Montgomery's fiction.

KATE: Yeah, that's right. Yes, because certainly going from Anne of Green Gables to some of Montgomery's final diary entries, which are just very bleak, maybe that contrast can be helpful, but you're definitely in two different worlds.

ANNE: Okay, we'll pay attention.

[00:28:10] KATE: Kate, what's the second book you love? A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. I also love this book because we have an investigator narrator. I listened to this one, which was great on audiobook with the Irish accent.

ANNE: It was so good.

KATE: So good. And then immediately read the book in paper copy because I just loved it so much. I love the language of this book. The author is a poet and the narrator is a new mother. My daughter was about a year and a half when I read it. And so that part really appealed to me.

The narrator mother-investigator character is translating from Irish into English, a poem by an 18th-century noble woman, the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. This was a mourning poem when she finds her husband murdered.

[00:29:03] I loved that the narrator trying to learn more about the woman behind this poem was such a central focus of the book. Our narrator, yeah, she talks to people, she visits sites, she does lots of reading. Again, yeah, I just found that really compelling as well as the beautiful language. And the focus, of course, too, on this is a female text is kind of the mantra of the book. That's repeated again and again. And it points to my interest in stories about women and the stories that women create.

ANNE: I enjoyed this one so much myself. Now, it sounds like this fits into one of the categories of books you really enjoy reading about, about creative and artistic women in history.

KATE: Absolutely.

ANNE: Would you say more about that?

[00:29:53] KATE: Yeah, it's something that I'm drawn to. I mean, especially like the 18th and 19th century, I had a really great professor teaching in that area. I think it's probably we can blame Jane Austen, really, who kind of hooked me into that time period. I am really interested in, well, fiction, but then also nonfiction that kind of has that individual human element at the center of women who are creating.

So writing in particular, but then all kinds of art. I think it's a really interesting way into the past because it's about when women start creating things, it's about them reacting to the world around them, shaping the world around them.

ANNE: Kate, what is the third book you love?

KATE: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. This is the story of Jack the Ripper's five canonical victims. So the five victims that they are pretty sure were all murdered by the person called Jack the Ripper. This book is amazing for a few reasons. It's nonfiction. Rubenhold is not interested at all really in Jack the Ripper and what the identity of that person is, which there is a lot of speculation and titillation around the identity of that murder.

[00:31:19] So Hallie Rubenhold is recuperating the names, the stories, the lives of the women who were Jack the Ripper's victims and really honoring them as human beings and putting their lives in the context of late 19th-century London. So it's just learning about these women in and of themselves is so powerful.

Again, another thing I love about this book is that we did get such a sense of the research that Rubenhold did and how the lives of working-class women who were often illiterate is not hard to piece together, but Rubenhold does it. She goes into like workhouse, poorhouse archives. It's such an honoring of these people whose lives have been dismissed, really.

ANNE: Now, Jack the Ripper on the surface does not quite fit with the other books that you have brought today, and yet the way you are describing it, I get it, but I am still struggling to articulate it. Can you say more about what lands it as... I mean, you only got three favorites and this is one of them. Can you say more?

[00:32:28] KATE: Yes. I think that these are stories about women's lives, women's lives in the past. They are stories that all have kind of an investigator character who is narrating them. Even if Hallie Rubenhold is not a character in her book, like you do get just such a powerful sense of her research. So that part I find really compelling.

You can kind of see that act of creation happening on the page. I think the honoring of people's lives, people who... well, I guess in all of them there is... I did not really think about this until right now, there is murder happening in all of these. I do like detective mystery novels.

So there are these horrible acts of violence that are being not like maybe rectified in a way. It makes me think of Ian McEwan's Atonement, right, and how this little girl grows up and she writes the sister and Robbie's story so that they get that happy ending.

[00:33:29] And so in some way, I think these books are all doing a similar thing in terms of The Postcard and The Five. Well, no, they actually all have real people at the heart of them. They are all rooted in historical figures who have been involved in an act of violence. And it's all about how creativity and storytelling can honor people and their lives. Does that make sense?

ANNE: It does. It does. And I am taking notes.

KATE: There is also just something about the connection between humans. And that is clear through like a storytelling, having that curiosity about other people that you want to tell their stories and write it down so that they are not forgotten. But family connections are also really strong here. Like in A Ghost in the Throat, it's a mother caring for her young children as she researches a mother from, you know, 250 years ago, and The Postcard is about finding family who were lost in the Holocaust. And The Five, like Hallie Rubenhold, shows that often these women were kind of dismissible. They were just in quotes, "prostitutes". But in The Five, they come alive as mothers and daughters and friends. And so it's about people being in connection with each other as well.

[00:34:49] I think that I really love that, like stories about individuals, but also where you get a sense of the historical moment, whether that is 2020 or I do not know, 1750.

ANNE: Kate, now would you tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you? And I would love to hear why. Not what you expected, bad timing. What did you choose?

KATE: The book I chose was All Fours by Miranda July. I was recommended this book by a bookseller at this lovely bookstore in rural Nova Scotia. So my expectations were high because the bookseller was so excited about it. I think what I did not like about this book, I just found it really self-indulgent. The stakes seemed like very individual and that people in the main character's lives kind of just felt like props in terms of this performative art that she was making her life into, even though it was her real life, but she was kind of acting like it was a performative art piece and that people were just props.

[00:35:58] I think as we were just talking about with the three books that I chose, I like books that are about, well, say strong female characters, strong characters. I want a compelling story about an individual, but I want to know about that context, like there are connections with other people about the place, about the historical moment. And I just do not think All Fours had that. The stakes needed to be higher for me.

ANNE: And there is not that sense of community that you really enjoyed in the ones you loved.

KATE: Yeah, absolutely. Again, not everything has to go back to L. M. Montgomery, but I cannot help it.

ANNE: But it might in this episode.

KATE: It might. But I cannot help but think of Anne of Green Gables. Her name is in the title of the book. This is her story. But we care as much about Marilla's development. And Margaret Atwood wrote a piece when Anne of Green Gables turned 100 about how Marilla is perhaps really the heroine of the story. She is the one who changes the most.

ANNE: Ooh.

[00:37:01] KATE: Yeah, which I love as a reading. And we just get such a sense of like Rachel Lynde and Matthew Cuthbert and Diana Barry and Aunt Josephine. And it's as much about how Avonlea responds to Anne as it's about her development. So that sense of community is really important for me. Community in terms of people, but also place.

Part of what I love about, say, Anne of Green Gables or The Five is just getting a sense of the different ways that people can live and the different ways that societies have been put together, right? There is not just one way of doing it.

ANNE: Okay, that sounds lovely. Also, I want to read that piece about Marilla as heroine.

KATE: Yes. Yeah. You can just Google it. There is a version of it in The Guardian, the UK Guardian online.

ANNE: I will track that down and we will put it in show notes. Kate, what have you been reading lately?

[00:37:58] KATE: All right. So on audio, I have been listening to Rebel of the Regency by Ann Foster, which is about the Prince Regent's wife. The Prince Regent who would have been acting as king, as regent, during some of Jane Austen's life. Again, that real interest I have in that time period. But the Prince Regent and his wife were estranged and she met all kinds of people like Napoleon, but had a very difficult time in England because she was ostracized.

She is a really interesting person who has been kind of misunderstood or not given that much attention. You get so much historical detail, but Anne Foster really also uses a lot of early 21st century language, and she actually draws parallels to the present moment and influencers. So you have really got the sense of like the connections between the early 19th century and the early 21st century. It's just very fun as well.

[00:39:05] The Prince Regent was very criticized for how he treated his wife and people would, you know, boo him in the street and stuff like that. And Jane Austen said that she would be on Princess Caroline's side because she is a woman, Princess Caroline is a woman, and I hate her husband. But he was a huge fan of Jane Austen's work. He kept copies of her books in all of his houses and kind of through His library and kind of bullied her into dedicating Emma to him. I know some scholars read Frank Churchill as potentially a version of the Prince Regent who doesn't go kind of uncriticized in that book.

ANNE: Sounds good. What else have you been reading?

KATE: My friend Sarah Emsley wrote a book called The Austens, which is about Jane Austen and her sister, Fanny Palmer Austen, who was born in Bermuda and spent time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I am today. It's really interesting because it shows those kind of international links that Jane Austen had, her links with Canada, you know, across the Atlantic world, in this case through her two naval brothers and then her sister-in-law. Just gives you a sense of what Mrs. Croft's life would have been like aboard a naval ship. And we can see Fanny's letters back to Jane Austen would have influenced in particular when she was writing Persuasion.

[00:40:28] ANNE: And Kate, you were just telling me that you were really enjoying classics on audio lately.

KATE: Yes. And I was inspired by episode 510 of What Should I Read Next? I have had a few false starts with Tom Jones. I was really enjoying it, but it's a huge book and I never got that deep into it. But I am loving it on audio. Henry Fielding is very funny. He breaks the fourth wall. He can be very chatty. It really works on audio, but I am really excited now to read more classics on audio. I think it could be a real game-changer for my reading life.

ANNE: Okay, well, I am happy to hear that for you. I have never read Tom Jones, or at least I have not yet read Tom Jones. Why this book?

KATE: Well, I did an 18th-century fiction course and one of my favorite university professors, Don Nichol, is an 18th-century lit prof, and Tom Jones is always a favorite of his. I know he has given me at least a couple copies of it over the years. So it felt like I have been waiting to read it.

[00:41:32] ANNE: All right, well, I am glad that it was ready for you when you were ready for it. Kate, what are you looking for in your reading life right now? Now, of course, some things have stood out to me from our conversation, but I would love to hear you say more.

KATE: I definitely, in my application to be on What Should I Read Next?, I had many, many ideas. I feel like maybe it comes down to ghost stories. I guess, as a metaphor, I am thinking about books like The Postcard, A Ghost in the Throat, The Five. The ghosts of these people whose lives are being investigated and being recuperated. And that is really true. Like, I mean, A Ghost in the Throat, it's right there in the title with the 18th-century poet, who is very much like haunting the narrative, even if she is not kind of necessarily an apparition.

[00:42:27] I am more and more interested in stories that have, well, actual apparitions. I was going to say literal ghosts. Can you have a literal ghost? An Instagram reading friend of mine had recommended Stephen King's The Reach, which is about an elderly woman who has never left this island in Maine, where she has lived her whole life there. And it's just separated from the mainland by a body of water called The Reach. And as she is kind of getting closer to the end of her life, all these people from her past start appearing to her and saying it's time to cross The Reach.

I think Stephen King is so brilliant, but also it just felt like the kind of story that L. M. Montgomery could have written. She did write some ghost stories, but it just feels like, you know, it's all part of this Atlantic, Northeastern world, a focus on women and the past kind of always being with us. So ghosts in different forms is, I think, what it all boils down to.

[00:43:29] ANNE: I love this. And also that is quite... well, you know, there is overlap, but it's a different direction from the investigator stories.

KATE: Yes. The investigators are... they are kind of haunted by these ghosts because they... like in A Ghost in the Throat, she just wants to learn everything she can about this 18th century poet. So is haunted by her and is trying to give voice to this ghost, the ghost in the throat. So, yeah, I think there are connections there. One book that I really liked was... is it J. Courtney Sullivan, The Cliffs?

ANNE: Yes, it is.

KATE: I was reading it and I just thought, "Oh my goodness, this book has so many parallels to Montgomery," like that focus on women's stories and the focus on one particular place, like the area on the top of the cliff. And there is no direct reference to Montgomery or Anne of Green Gables, but I Googled it after, and sure enough, she had written the introduction to a recent Penguin edition of Anne of Green Gables. So that was kind of fun. I guess that was me being the investigator, but it just seemed like, oh my goodness, there felt like a lot of influence there.

[00:44:39] ANNE: I was so intrigued when you mentioned L. M. Montgomery could have written that Stephen King story in your submission. And I am really glad you told us more just now. Thank you very much.

KATE: It's a great story. I really recommend it. And it's not horror. I mean, there is a ghost and there are some dark things, but nothing that would not have happened in a rural community in the 20th century.

ANNE: That sounds delightful. You know, I have enjoyed the Stephen King I have read on the whole, but I never thought an L. M. Montgomery reference would add another story to my list. My King reading list.

KATE: I know. I just cannot resist making that connection because it seems so unexpected.

[00:45:24] ANNE: What are we going to talk about today? Kate, we have good options. I mean, I feel like every week we have good options. But it's possible some of these are so on the nose you have already read them, and that will definitely help me narrow it down. But to recap, you loved The Postcard, A Ghost in the Throat, and The Five. Not for you, All Fours. And lately you have been reading Rebel of the Regency by Anne Foster, The Austens by Sarah Emsley, and Tom Jones on audio. And you are looking for ghost stories. But also we know that you love tales of literary women, books where detective work is a big part of the story. You love an investigator, nonfiction about creative and artistic women in history. Also, I think I remember reading that you... Oh, you said specifically books about houses.

KATE: Yes, love books about houses.

ANNE: I have novels of a certain era in my mind. Or am I making that up? Like 19th, 20th century?

KATE: Yeah.

[00:46:27] ANNE: I would like to jump in with a book that I have not talked about on the podcast, but I feel like I have been talking about a lot lately because we just hosted the author Sarai Johnson in book club. But that is Grown Women by Sarai Johnson. This is a debut. It's a multi-generational family saga that does not feel entirely unlike some of the issues we see in L. M. Montgomery, but this does not have a balance of heavy and light.

There is not as much light to outweigh a lot of heavy. This is very much about the ghosts of the past and how they haunt us, both in the form of just embodied generational trauma, but also, there is a very specific literary ghost I am going to tell you about in a moment.

[00:47:13] This is a depiction of four generations of Black Southern women — the story takes place in Atlanta, Nashville, and surrounds and D.C. predominantly — and how they interact with each other as mothers and daughters. Some of the mothers know they are terrible mothers. Some of the mothers know they received bad mothering and want to do better by their daughters. Their attempts to correct and do better by their daughters. Sometimes backfire, sometimes do not succeed at all, sometimes cause harms that they did not remotely foresee.

But it starts when we see the second generation fleeing Atlanta, where she has clearly left behind a life of at least financial privilege to arrive in Nashville, to start a new life with a soon-to-be daughter that we know she does not want to have, but she has decided to have. And in the next 300-something pages, we learn more about why. And her reasons are good. Make a lot of sense. Feel a lot of empathy for this character.

[00:48:22] But she has a daughter who also gets pregnant while still in high school and has a daughter who the whole family, including the estranged great grandmother who is brought back into her life, who is a renowned literary scholar, all try to do their best by this baby girl who grows up and we leave her in the story at the age of maybe 17. But lots of thorny mother-daughter relationships and lots of questions about how or is it even possible to right the wrongs of the past and what might that look like?

But this book does interrogate the painful, traumatic things that have happened in our past and how the impacts of that play out. And it would be really easy for this book just to be very on the nose and feel heavy-handed, like a textbook. And it does not as well. The way that Johnson explores race, class, ambivalent parenthood, resentment, redemption is so good, so good. But it's hard and heavy. Readers should know that going in.

[00:49:32] But something I was especially charmed by and that felt so... I mean, it was just the right amount, is the literary scholar, who is the first generation in this book, takes pride in her house. She loves her neighborhood even though it's not particularly fashionable because it has this literary history that means a lot to her.

And the character... now, this is not like a major plot thing in the book. And I do not mind that a bit, but I love that it's in the book and the author keeps coming back to it. But that house is haunted, and it's haunted by this past owner, this literary figure. But sometimes it takes the form of the home's owner leaves the room, she comes back, things are not where she left them. And sometimes that is pretty tricky when she is working on a manuscript. But sometimes she will come back from working on a manuscript and there will be handwritten notes in red pen all over the pages that are not in the owner's handwriting. Like somebody else has been there and left her thoughts. I just thought those details are so fun. So you get literal and figurative ghosts in this book. And we are just going to stipulate that we both know what I mean when I say literal ghosts.

[00:50:44] KATE: Yes, exactly. This sounds amazing. Like so many intersections with my interests and what we have been talking about.

ANNE: I am glad to hear it. We have another book about a ghost for you. And this one is set in Western Massachusetts and it goes from the Puritan era forward to the present time. It's by Daniel Mason. It's called North Woods. Is this one you are familiar with?

KATE: Yes, I have it on my shelf. It's one of these books I read the beginning, loved it, and then, for whatever reason, did not keep reading it. But yeah, it's one that I have on my TBR for sure.

ANNE: Did you get to the wronged in a past life spinster sisters whose ghosts come to haunt the house that is the setting of the story, owner after owner, after owner, after owner?

KATE: No, that does not sound familiar.

[00:51:39] ANNE: Okay, well, that is going to happen.

KATE: Okay.

ANNE: Early in the book, you meet a pair of Puritan lovers. Then there is a soldier turned farmer determined to grow the best apples of the world. Those apples keep showing up in the pages for centuries. You get spinster sisters and it's their ghosts who will come to haunt the property. And they are accidentally summoned by a charlatan who is conducting a fake seance that turns to everyone's surprise, except perhaps the ghosts themselves, very, very real.

There is a pair of star-crossed lovers, a participant in a prison pen pal program. Not all the characters whose minds we get inside to get their perspective on this house and this place are human. So, for you, I was thinking it's a book about a house. It's also a book with ghosts. No investigator to run you through the years like in some of your favorites, but how does that sound to you?

[00:52:38] KATE: That sounds great, yes. Yeah, a haunted house. I love a story like The Cliffs where we follow a house through centuries or generations. So that sounds great.

ANNE: All right, I am glad to hear it. I do not know about this next one, but it feels worth mentioning as it is a Jack the Ripper, Medusa mashup by Julie Berry. She was on the podcast I think last fall, and we did talk about this book. It's called If Looks Could Kill. Does this sound familiar?

KATE: It does not.

ANNE: Okay, well, she is best known, I believe, for her book The Lovely War. Although my kids were assigned The Passion of Dolssa as school reading forever ago. So maybe some people know her from that work that was widely read in school. But I love Lovely War. And then If Looks Could Kill came out this past fall.

[00:53:30] And of course, it's Hallie Rubenhold, The Five, making me think of this one. I'm not sure if your interest in retellings and reimaginings is limited to Anne of Green Gables, or if you are interested in this kind as well. But in this story, which is written, as her past works have been, for YA readers, but it's very hospitable to a wide audience, as long as you are not going to be scared by the monsters. But it's set in, well, predominantly in 1888 New York City, with some flashes across the Atlantic to origin stories unfolding in London with Jack the Ripper.

But in late 19th century New York, we meet a young girl named Tabitha who has left her home upstate for the city because she wants to join the Salvation Army in the Bowery in order to start a new life, make some friends, and also help humankind. But instead, she ends up getting all mixed up with her roommate, so at least she has company, but they realize that something sinister is happening at a brothel in the Bowery. They see a teenage girl get disappeared inside its walls and they feel compelled to try to do something.

[00:54:45] So when they seek to help out this young woman, they tap into a sisterhood of Medusas in New York City who are bent on justice for women that have been hurt by bad men, including Jack the Ripper, who is trying to hide out and stay beneath the radar in late 19th century New York City. Historical fiction with a strong mythical component. Not quite ghosts, but if we broaden the heading to ghosts and monsters, then maybe.

KATE: Well, that sounds really intriguing. I think kind of magical realism is definitely an area that I am getting more interested in. Because this book sounds like it's rooted in the historic reality, right? Like, well, historical figures and places and then with a mythical twist. Yeah, that sounds really interesting.

ANNE: So this is carefully researched, and also not all nonfiction.

KATE: Right, but yeah, still with that, yeah, serious focus on women's stories and historical events. Yeah.

ANNE: Indeed.

[00:56:06] KATE: I have not come across that at all, so thank you.

ANNE: Well, I wanted to put it on your radar and leave it up to you to decide whether or not it's a good fit. Now, I have an idea for you that is either going to be completely obvious or maybe not so much, but it's Sarah Polley's memoir and essays, Run Towards the Danger. Is this one you have read or familiar with?

KATE: I have read it, yes.

ANNE: Okay.

KATE: And there is that whole chapter about her experience being on Road to Avonlea, which was a favorite of mine growing up and a spinoff of the Story Girl. But of course, yeah, as you know, it goes much beyond that as well, and yeah, essays on many parts of her life.

ANNE: Yes, I wondered if that would count as metaphorical ghosts. But she does have an essay, I think it's called Dissolving the Boundaries, where she describes taking a trip back to Prince Edward Island.

[00:56:56] KATE: Oh, right. Yes, that is right.

ANNE: I mean, my first introduction to Sarah Polley was as the Story Girl and the Road to Avonlea.

KATE: Yeah, but you are right. Like the ghost idea does kind of work because when she goes back to Prince Edward Island as an adult she is very much haunted by that experience of being on Road to Avonlea and in particular, like herself as Sara Stanley, right?

ANNE: Yes, the Story Girl.

KATE: Yeah.

ANNE: Okay, well, let us get you a new one. Let us get you one more. Kate, have you read Possession by A. S. Byatt?

KATE: Yeah, you know what? I was thinking, "Oh, I wonder if that book will come out when we are talking." I have not. So you need to encourage me to read it because I feel like, again, this is one of these books. Do I have a terrible habit of just reading a little bit and then not reading books? There was something about it I just could not get into, but it really checks off a lot of my interest, does it not?

[00:57:51] ANNE: It really does. And I will tell you, I wonder how much mood has to do with this. I inhaled it on my first read, and when I revisited it during a busy time of my life, maybe five years ago, I struggled. But I do think it's worth a try for you just purely based on what you know about your own reading life. Because for those interested in interrogating the past, books with investigators or amateur literate investigators, as they are here, it's an academic mystery, it does have that same... I mean, it has two characters who have teamed up to be investigators to the past.

And her prose is very elegant, lyrical, vivid. And if you like that kind of thing, she has fictional letters and poems and journal entries in her books that are written by many characters, not just one. I think it could be a lot of fun for you. And it's also set during a time period that I believe you are interested in.

[00:58:57] So this is about two scholars who are researching the lives of Victorian poets, particularly Randolph Henry Ash and also another named Christabel LaMotte. And they are on a mission to discover the truth about these writers because it's Ash they were first interested in, but then they accidentally stumble upon this evidence that makes them think like, wait, was there an illicit love affair happening between these two Victorian writers? Because that would change what we understand about their lives. It would change the things we understand about their works and their meanings.

So they embark on this quest to discover the truth. And they are chasing this trail of evidence through the ages and through many a library, but also this quest calls them to examine their own personal relationships. So we have got that back and forth in time element happening here. I'm wondering how that sounds to you.

[01:00:02] KATE: It sounds so good, like this is a book that I should have read years ago. Yeah, like then the 19th century, the literary mystery, the investigation, it's all there. So I'm really glad that you brought it up because I think that'll be incentive to finally read it.

ANNE: Kate, of the books we talked about today, they were Grown Women by Sarai Johnson, North Woods by Daniel Mason, we talked about If Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry, and then Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polly. Wanted to recap those for our listeners. And then also Possession by A.S. Byatt. Of those books, what do you think you may pick up first?

KATE: All right, so I'm definitely going to read them all. I think I'll start with North Woods because I did read a bit of that and I have a copy. So I just need to pull it off the bookshelf.

ANNE: I'm happy to hear it. Kate, I enjoyed this so much. Thank you for talking books with me today.

KATE: Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure, and I'm just so excited now to have more ghosty stories to read. So thank you.

[01:01:10] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kate, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Connect with Kate at her website, katescarth.com. We have that link, links to the Ella Montgomery Institute, the full list of titles we talked about today, and more at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at Studio D Podcast Production.

[01:02:15] Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.