The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery- a Non-Review

I picked up The Blue Castle again recently and felt the urge to write about it.  But I feel absolutely no desire to review it.  You see, reviewing something requires analysing it.  Looking at what was good and what was flawed.  This book has been magic for me since I was 11 years old, and I have no desire to look for flaws and risk killing the magic.

Our heroine, Valancy Stirling, is in a bad way at the start of the book.  It's the morning of her 29th birthday, and she's decided it's time to face the truth.  She is old and unloved, living with family who intimidate and stifle her, and the secret chest pains she's been experiencing are getting worse.  The only pleasant thing in her life are John Foster's books, which she manages to sneak by her mother.

At 11 I *so* identified with Valancy.  What teen or preteen hasn't felt ugly and unwanted, misunderstood by her family?  And I know that books, like those by L.M. Montgomery and the ones my parents always called my "trashy teen novels", were my solace and escape from that pain.  I was right there with her with the shyness and thinking that no boy would ever love me.  (At 11.  Oy.)  By the end of the first chapter I was hooked.

What Valancy discovered, and what I discovered through her, is that there can be so much more to life than your current situation.  She got a pretty major piece of news, and it inspired her to let go of her fear.  When she let go of her fear she discovered that even though she'd felt alone, there was a dear friend just waiting for her.  She found purpose in her life.  She found love, and thought it was small, she found a family, community.  It was all right there once she moved past her fear and reached for it.

"Fear is the original sin," wrote John Foster.  "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something."

I've used this quote in much the same way Valancy did-- to find the courage to move past fear and open up my life.  There have been times when it was written on a notecard and taped to the mirror or the closet door.  Sometimes I just had to pick up the book and skim until I found it.  That quote has become an anchor for me, one of my fundamental beliefs that makes me the person that I am.

I've read it at least once a year for the last 25 years.  (I'm on my third copy.  All lovingly treated, but there's only so much use a modern paperback can take before it falls apart.)  Every time I read it, it soothes something in my soul, and every time I read it I find something new.  I've even read The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough, a version of the novel set in the mountains of Australia.  (My Blue Castle was better.)

As an adult I still relate to Valancy, although hopefully in a slightly more mature way.  I still have my moments when I feel unloved and unlovely.  I still get sucked into the story and root for her when she.. well, I'll leave that part out.  Spoilers, you know.  It can still make me cry a little bit when everything comes out right in the end.  And it still makes me want to be brave.  I'd say that's pretty darn good for a silly little novel I read when I was 11.