I tend to think Montgomery (and Bev) gilds the lily a bit about her magical voice, but it doesn't detract much from the overall enjoyment of the book. We readers have to take Bev's word (and Montgomery's) about how spellbinding she is, since we only get to read Sara's words without hearing them. She has excellent recall, a great appreciation of the power of words, and quick wits to come up with a perfect story for any occasion. These leads slide past others as ordinary and mundane until Sara gets hold of them and forms them into her own personal style of live theatre. She has a genius for sniffing out ripping yarns from modest raw material that comes to her from everywhere. The Story Girl gains Beverley's fascination at the outset.
The adventures and personality clashes of such a disparate group are great fun to read about. Rounding off their little gang is the hired boy Peter Craig, who is inquisitive and hard-working, and Sara Ray, whose controlling mother makes her wistful and anxious. A stone's throw away lives another cousin, Sara Stanley (the Story Girl) who has a fascinating gift of the gab. They live under the same roof with their cousins pragmatic, irreverent Dan, beautiful and conventional Felicity and gentle Cecily. Not everyone is so grounded, and it's a true blessing. I love their deep sense of rootedness, and the idea that a long, quirky lineage on the same patch of land has helped shape them into the boys they already are. It's clearly one of the best times of his life, and he describes their shenanigans, fun and occasional angst as if he were back on the spot, adding occasional comments from his older self about how naive, credulous but essentially merry they all were.īev and Felix already possess a great sense of home from the moment of their arrival, since their father has described the folklore and features of the ancestral stamping ground to them. A grown man named Beverley King narrates the story of how he and his brother Felix were sent to stay for an indeterminate length of time with relatives at the family homestead where their dad was brought up many years earlier. This is a tale of eight youngsters between the ages of 11 and 14 who hang out together in a breathtaking part of Prince Edward Island. Pure nostalgia can be beautifully compelling. Whether she's leading them on exciting misadventure or narrating timeless stories-from the scary "Tale of the Family Ghost" to the fanciful "How Kissing Was Discovered" to the bittersweet "The Blue Chest of Rachel Ward"-the Story Girl has her audience hanging on every word. And when Bev King and his younger brother Felix arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding tales. Sara Stanley is only fourteen, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist.
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