Anne of Green Gables Series Part II - L M. Montgomery

Because of formatting issues on the other one, I had to chop it short. I continue the summaries here.


Anne of Ingleside

Apparently this book was added later on, Rilla of Ingleside came first. If so, Montgomery's pretty good at maintaining the continuity. If you like children, these sketches are for you. Anne undoubtedly has some very adorable children. There's Jem, the baby of the House of Dreams, grown up in red-headed glory. Then there's Walter, the dreamy boy who's inherited his mother's literary ability and something more, something that will make him renowned. Nan and Di are the twins, Nan a very pretty girl with chestnut curls like her Father, and Di with Anne's red hair and grey-green eyes, for which reason she is undoubtably Gilbert's favourite. (Funny, I thought favouritism wasn't healthy for children. And I don't see Di's self-esteem having a good future with such a pretty twin.). Shirley belongs to Susan, the general helper at Ingleside. He's her little brown boy. I don't think I'd like my son to be possessed by any other woman, even if they were like a maid, and even if I had so many others. And then there's Rilla, who doesn't feature much in this book, aside from being decidedly chubby and vain and lisping, much as she is at the beginning of Rilla of Ingleside. And these children make up the bulk of the story. Of course, it begins with Anne and Diana renewing their friendship with a wild ramble, but you get the sense that she's a removed from her previous life, as lovely as that was, because it's the natural course of things. Then there's the advent of a terrible aunt, one of Montgomery's crowning triumphs as far as I'm concerned, because she makes me want to laugh and throttle her similtaneously. The rest of the book is sweet sketches of her children and their mishaps (obviously, they've inherited her mother's tendency for scrapes). At the end, there's a final episode between Anne and Gilbert, over the 'other woman' Christine Stuart. I really dislike how Montgomery made her into the 'other woman' character - in Anne of the Island, Gilbert talks of her as "one of the nicest girls he knows" and even Anne through her jealousy, doesn't say anything about any defects of character. But here she's morphed into some terrible, spiteful woman clutching at past beaus, poisoning everyones happiness with her malicious, insinuating speeches. It's too much stereotyping.

Rainbow Valley

I found this one a bit dull. I know I have a loyalty complex, but I dont' think that's what's at work here. I think it's just a case of too many minor characters. There are the 6 children of Anne and Gilbert, and then the children of the neighbours, and so none of them get much time or words, and none of them really stand out, except for Walter, because he's the sensitive but brilliant potential poet. The relationship between John Meredith and Rosemary West was neither touching or convincing - I think by now Montgomery's gotten into the habit of adding a dash of romance into everything she writes, but it's lost its charm. I hate to say this becuase Montgomery was my favourite author as a kid and hugely influencial in my childhood, but I think she's kind of milked her small-town-coziness stories dry.

Rilla of Ingleside

Or not. Rilla is a brilliant character because she gets a reaction out of you. At the beginning she was a vain, infuriating little thing, but undeniably the heroine of the story. There was no getting past her. She isn't much like Anne. Anne was a deep soul in a child's body, both quirky and fiery, but ultimately with a good heart. You know there isn't anyone else like her. The sum of Rilla, on the other hand, is vanity - at least at the beginning.
The beautiful thing about the whole story, however, is how she grows. I love comign of age and growth stories. They speak so much to me because I think we've all got things we need to improve upon and grow out of. I won't spoil it but by the end, Rilla is right up there near Anne, for me.
Coupled with this is the heartwrenching war. You get the same desperate sense of uncertainty as the folks who lived through it, and died a little every time a newspaper bearing casualty lists came along. It's loss and tension and living on even after you don't want to anymore. Someone very special to us dies - but of course you have to read it to know.

Anne of Green Gables Series - L M. Montgomery

This is a brilliant series, obviously her crowning work. If you read Montgomery's biography you will find she sufffered bouts of depression which show in her work - because the 'Pat' series is uniformly bland, as are some of her one-off books like the Blue Castle (I classify it as cheap romance). I grew up with this series and so did my best friends, so it has a lot of nostalgia and poignancy beyond the actual work, which is beautiful in itself. I think they're all available from gutenberg but I can't be sure because I have my own series, most of which is in the lovely Angus and Robertson editions you will see below.

Anne of Green Gables

Prior to Anne of Green Gables, there were a lot of these orphan adoption stories. Ruth Fielding, Pollyanna. But I feel, although I don't have the research to prove it, that it all came to an end with Anne of Green Gables, because this book is literature. It is a gem. Not only does it have such beautiful descriptions of Prince Edward Island (henceforth, P.E.I), harum-scarum Anne is immortal. She's a character as never known before - such good intentions, but so far from perfect, always the perpetrator of some "scrape", such quaint language, and such a way with people that readers are as equally charmed as, say, Marilla. Anne is stubborn and strong-willed, an optimist who learns and loves. Her feud with Gilbert Blythe is a thread that binds the book together, to the end where she forgives him and they become such friends. This book stands so well on its own, everytime I read it I get a sense of completion at the end that doesn't come with the other books. You get a strong sense of the town life with all the comings and goings of so many families, and all that clannishness. Although I've always felt Diana was sweet, but not of Anne's calibre and may fall a little short as a best friend, loveable as she is. The scrapes they get into! The haunted wood, jumping on Aunt Josephine, the story club! It's such a laugh-out-loud read. And the cover reflects that, with the chummy smile on the face of a miniature Anne.

Anne of Avonlea

Here, Anne undergoes a metamorphosis. She's slender and dainty and wears something of her soul in her limpid grey eyes, although she still gets into a few scrapes. The book opens with an argument with the new neighbour, Mr. Harris and his disreputable parrot, Ginger. She ends up accidently selling his cow. As it is in the first book, humor plays a large part in this novel, from when falls through the roof of someone's duck house, to when she and Marilla adopt a set of twins. Dora is prim and proper, but Davy is an adorable, irascible "holy terror". She and Gilbert also start the AVIS, the Avonlea Improvement Society, and happen to paint the hall bright blue! Anne is teaching this year and wins the love of every little soul, down to Anthony Pye of the infamous Pyes. And at the end, Gilbert is there to help her cross her threshold into womanhood. It is such an amusing read, with much of the same spirit as Anne of Green Gables. I love the cover and font of this one. Its in the impressionist, hazy brushstrokes that I think conveys Anne's soul very well.


Anne of the Island

This is Anne and her friends' initiation into adult life and the romance of youth. It is choc-a-bloc full of proposals and marriages and courting, and I think that's where a little of the humour comes in. But suddenly things are more serious, Anne is fanciful but fully-fledged, no longer the well-meaning youth always making mistakes. I kind of miss how she is before, but people do have to grow up. As well, it is her magic college years with the warmth of Patty's Place as Anne finally attends Redmond College, as her heart desires. She meets a whole new wealth of friends, among them the loveable and incorrigable Phillipa Gordon, and we also meet up again with the fanciful Stella Maynard and the lovely Priscilla Grant. Halfway through the book, Gilbert proposes, and is rejected kindly but heartwrenchingly. Then Anne's own ideal of Prince Charming comes in the form of the "dark, melancholy and inscrutable" Royal Gardiner and it seems like Anne's future is mapped out with this handsome stranger until... I like this book well, and Anne's final engagement is very satisfactory, but I miss the innocence and amusing tidbits of the earlier books. The reader definately knows before Anne who she is going to end up with.
I really like these editions of the series, by Angus and Robertson. Anne is very true to life, just as a imagined her, with the dreamy face and freckles. It has her down pat, just as Megan Follows has her down pat in the Anne of Green Gables movie.

Anne of Windy Willows (also published as Anne of Windy Poplars)Definately one of my favourites in the series. This book just hums with life. Anne has accepted the principalship of a private girls school whilst waiting out the three years until her marriage to -humm-. Again, the cover is beautiful to behold. I love the quirk of her nose and the richness of her hair, she IS Anne. The cat is Dusty Miller and the little golden girl is little Elizabeth, quaint and pixyish. The illustrator, Margaret Power, must have really enjoyed the series.
It's an epistolary novel punctuated by bits of quaint storytelling. The whole story is charming. Anne is up against the elite of Summerside, the Pringles, who run the place. They have a grudge against her and really wage warfare against her. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she wins their support through the most surprising of events. There's also a prickly vice-principle Katherine Brooke, the lovely aunts she boards with, the immortal Rebecca Dew and many such people. There is the fair share of romance in this story, and Anne has her part in fixing up many people's lives. I think I missed Windy Willows (where she boards) as much as she when she leaves!


Anne's House of Dreams

In this book, Anne is married and lives in a little out of the way place she dubs her house of dreams. Her social circle is much much smaller, being comprised of the man-hating Miss Cornelia who blisters the men with her sharp tongue, but who is very warm-hearted, the tragic and beautiful Leslie Moore, cold and vibrant and resentful in turns, the sailor Captain Jim, the talented Owen Ford and later, the housekeeper Susan. And of course, Anne's husband (I'm trying not to spoil anything but it feels so strange calling him that all the time, as though he's a stranger in the series) and one or two more additions to the family. Like all of the other books, everything works together for best in the end. Apparently this book predated Windy Willows by many years - Windy Willows was written when a movie of Anne of made, and published for publicity. This is the last book in the series that focuses on Anne, for which I cannot be grateful.

Anne of Ingleside

Mistress Pat - L M. Montgomery

I'm crazy about Montgomery's books, but I've realised lately that it's more than enjoying them. I grew up with Montgomery. As a kid, my best friend and I would meet at the library and devour them and share "chummy" laughs over them, and so now I have this psychological dependence on them because she was my childhood favourite author. That being said, it's kind of disillusioning rereading them and finding all these things to criticise. After Anne and Emily, I'm beginning to see a formula going on. With Anne and Emily, it was successful but after those really vibrant girl characters, Pat is very bland. During the first book (there's only two in this series, Pat of Silver Bush and this one) she was so insipid that when she started having those outrageous boyfriends at the end (which was a really stupid addition to the story) I wondered what they saw in her. She doesn't do anything well except for love things, but Montgomery somehow doesn't make that characteristic work in this book.

Back to the formulas, Pat was a bit of a washed out Emily. Whereas Anne and Emily have almost exactly the same story but are as different as night and day, Pat and Emily have almost nothing in common but somehow Pat contrives to be a foil to Emily. Also, the character of David, the shell-shocked widow, is strongly reminiscent of that creep, Dean Priest in Emily. Someone who's intellectual and stimulating but also cynical and bitter and twisted. Pat's story is very much a home story, which I did enjoy. It's got that wholesome family feel within it, where all the stories centre around the family unit. But unlike Anne and Emily, nothing much seems to happy. It's very insular, and I guess that's in character with Pat who absolutely adores her home, but it doesn't add much for interest. A couple of silly 'love affairs' as Montgomery calls them, within that warm family backdrop, but I really don't like Montgomery's 'love affairs'. They're trashy. She's a great writer and has great pathos with nature and I always think Canada is one of the most beautiful places in the world though I haven't been there, but those silly, shallow little flirtations (which, in Anne, were recognised as flirtations) downgrade her. Sometimes when I'm exasperated, I think she might almost have been a precursor of Mills and Boons. But the story: Pat Gardiner is as much in love with her home as she ever was, so nothing suits her better than staying home and being the homemaker now her mother is an invalid. They get a new hired man (Tillytuck, who's a pretty cool character, bold as brass and quite suits the ambience) her sister "Cuddles" grows up and becomes the beautiful Rae (more on her later) and boys hang around with their tongues out over the Gardiner girls but thankfully, Montgomery squeezes them into small, insignificant paragraphs. Not much happens, just the patterns of town life, except at the end, Pat and David get engaged, break the engagement and the house burns down and she marries another man named Hilary. My nitpicks? Cuddles is a horrible character. I don't know what Montgomery was trying to get with her, but she's shallow and vain and all she thinks about is beaus. Kind of another Ruby Gillis, but Montgomery never tried to pass her off as anything but a social butterfly, unlike Cuddles who's supposed to be quite intelligent but just doesn't pass muster. Cuddles, or Rae, as she grows up to be, only calms down and learns to be sensible after she gets engaged, and after that she becomes a great sister. Secondly, David and Pat? Hello, Dean and Emily much? Only muted down, like everything else. Thankfully we don't see too much of him. But Montgomery is wayy too obvious about Jingle (or Hilary), the one Pat really ends up with in the last chapter or so of the book. Her childhood friend (with the most ridiculous name in history) who's a brilliant architect and has been her rejected suitor for years because of course, she's too clueless to realise she will end up with him even though the readers have known it for years and believe me, you don't hold your breath waiting for it. Her house burns down and everything she loves is gone, and her life is a living hell and Jingle pops up and wants to whisk her away to the house he's built especially for her in goodness knows where, I think it was Vancouver, and everyone's happy ever after. I kind of expected something like a fire to happen because I knew somehow she'd have to stop worshipping it and start worshipping Jingle instead. You may think all this criticism means I don't like it, but I don't despise it. It's okay for a nice, quiet, calm read if you're not looking for literature and can ignore all those 'romantic' contrivances. There were some really effective bits, like Judy's death that touched some chord deep, deep inside you that you doubted this book would reach. Much like Bet's death in the first book, who was Pat's childhood best friend, and that made me cry, but I couldn't cry over Judy, it was different. Also, the deviation from the normal 'happily ever after', because Sid, Pat's favourite brother is entrapped into marrying her worst enemy, snipey May Binnie, who is like Anne's Josie Pye. It's a sobering thought that he'll never get out of it, and to see the family living in one house and all the ruckus because of his petty, selfish wife... It really stood out for me. Apparently Montgomery put more of herself into this book than Anne or Emily (in which case her imagination is better than her life, or she's more boring than her characters, or both) and it makes you wonder... Lastly, I really love Hilary the architect. Ever since I've read all that stuff about the mood of houses, I've had a great appreciation for the way houses are built and how they look, because they really have a personality to them. I live on a really hodge-podge street in terms of architecture, and there's some boring stuff and there's some really beautiful homes that look so at one with their surroundings. But the Lonely House here is just the Disappointed House in Emily recycled and done up less pleasingly. LITERARY MERIT: *** 1/2 ENJOYMENT: ****