My curiosity was piqued to read this novel because of its subject:  Lucy Maud Montgomery (Maud), famous for writing the popular 1908 international best-selling novel, Anne of Green Gables situated in Montgomery's home province of Prince Edward Island (Canada).    While I have yet to read Anne of Green Gables, I have seen on TV its 1934 movie version several times as a child, as well as the 1985 TV version starring Megan Fellows, Colleen Dewhurst, and Richard Farnsworth  --- both of which I loved. 

The novel gives the reader entree into Maud's life from her early 30s (at the time Anne of Green Gables was soon to be published) to the time of her death in April 1942.   If anyone has the impression that a writer of children's stories lives a largely happy, full, and joyous life, perish the thought.   Maud harbored ambitions that were seen by the society of her time as inappropriate and were often discouraged.    She had been a schoolteacher until her maternal grandfather's death, thereupon she went to live with her grandmother, who comes across the pages of the novel as someone who lived according to societal norms she learned to embrace and make her own, giving her character an unflappable solidity.    I enjoyed the scenes featuring Maud's interactions with her grandmother, as well as with her best friend and beloved cousin Frederica Campbell (affectionately referred to by Maud as "Frede.")

This is a novel that for me helped to convey the ups and downs that Maud contended with in life, with herself, her husband (a shy, insecure man who later lapsed into mental illness and abandoned his ministry), and her 2 sons.     

From reading After Anne, I now feel so much sympathy for Maud that I want to, in the offing, begin reading some of the journals (diaries) she meant for publication that I've had in storage for a few years.