Genre: Period fiction (takes place around 1900 in Canada)
Year Published: 1939
One of the interchangeably adorable children of Ingleside had a fancy, a brilliant, whimsical fancy. This child did not tell anyone, not the other children of Ingleside, nor the grown-ups (Mummy, Daddy, and Susan the Live-In Cook/Maid/Nanny).
Oh, the fancy of that adorable child! It was full of fairies and wonderment. Or perhaps it was full of ghosts and terror. But in any case, it truly was such a fancy as had never been heard of on all of P.E. Island.
But then the Cruel, Real World intruded upon the child's fancy. Oh, how could it be borne?? The poor little child thought the world would come falling down.
In the throes of agony, the child went to Mummy and told her all about the fancy and subsequent demolishing of said fancy. Mummy didn't laugh -- she never laughed at her dear, lovely children! -- but instead said something so understanding and kind that the child felt that the world was just after all. Ah, Mummy was the best mummy in the world.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Three thousand times.
Recommended? If you can stand the above, then by all means, go for it.
Showing posts with label anne of green gables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anne of green gables. Show all posts
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Anne's House of Dreams (L.M. Montgomery)
Genre: Period fiction (takes place around 1890 in Canada)
Year Published: 1917
Upon completing the latest book in the Anne of Green Gables sequence, my first impulse was to look up L.M. Montgomery on Wikipedia to ascertain, as I thought was clear, that she had actually written this book -- which covers the first two years of Anne's marriage -- before she herself had gotten married or had children. However, I was wrong; while Montgomery's first two Anne books were written while she was single, she'd already married and had all three of her children by the time Anne's House of Dreams was published.
Why did this surprise me? Well, because this book reads like it was written by someone who had no concept of marriage. Montgomery goes out of her way to avoid writing any scenes in which Anne and her husband Gilbert are just . . . being married people. I'm not talking about sex, I mean you never see them just sitting and enjoying each other's company; you never seem them co-parenting the little boy they have by the end of the novel; you never see them making any decisions together. On the last count, there are a handful of decisions that are made throughout the book, but Gilbert makes up his mind and informs Anne afterwards -- sometimes she struggles against him a bit, but always capitulates in the end.
If that doesn't sound quite like the kind of husband Gilbert Blythe would make, or the kind of wife Anne Shirley would be, you're not alone in that opinion. I know that my discomfort springs mostly from my feminist, twenty-first century ideals, but it also comes partly from knowing these characters as well as a reader can.
So if the book isn't really about Anne and Gilbert's marriage, what is it about? Well, disregarding entirely the "show, don't tell" maxim of fiction, Montgomery allows her book to be dominated by the dialogue of two boilerplate characters, Miss Cornelia Bryant and Captain Jim Boyd. Miss Cornelia blames men for everything, and Captain Jim is a good-hearted hero. That's about all you need to know about them, as they're never really fleshed out beyond that. (One other character, Mrs. Leslie Moore, rounds out the cast -- more about her later.) From the amount of visiting each other Anne, Miss Cornelia, and Captain Jim do, you'd think they literally had nothing else to do. Wasn't life in the Victorian period complicated? They had to make and mend their own clothes, make all their food, write long letters . . . I find it hard to believe they could stand around jawing all day. And yet the book relies almost entirely on dialogue, with the occasional descriptive passage about the beauty of their little seaside town.
The aforementioned Mrs. Moore forms the requisite "fixer-upper" plot of the Anne series, and once again, it just screams deus ex machina. Montgomery's problem on this score is simply that she likes her main characters and will simply not allow them to do anything she might consider immoral or unethical. So while there would have been an intellectually honest, relatively true-to-life way to resolve Mrs. Moore's B-plot, Montgomery shunts this solution aside so Mrs. Moore can remain utterly blameless, a virtuous model of womanhood. Instead, Montgomery invents a ridiculous "out" for Mrs. Moore, all the while having her characters explain that it's "it wasn't one of those [occurrences] you read of in novels." If you need to have your characters say that, you're in trouble.
Recommended? No. So far, the only Anne books I can recommend are the first three. I'll read all of them in their turn and let you all know if any others are worth salvaging.
Year Published: 1917
Upon completing the latest book in the Anne of Green Gables sequence, my first impulse was to look up L.M. Montgomery on Wikipedia to ascertain, as I thought was clear, that she had actually written this book -- which covers the first two years of Anne's marriage -- before she herself had gotten married or had children. However, I was wrong; while Montgomery's first two Anne books were written while she was single, she'd already married and had all three of her children by the time Anne's House of Dreams was published.
Why did this surprise me? Well, because this book reads like it was written by someone who had no concept of marriage. Montgomery goes out of her way to avoid writing any scenes in which Anne and her husband Gilbert are just . . . being married people. I'm not talking about sex, I mean you never see them just sitting and enjoying each other's company; you never seem them co-parenting the little boy they have by the end of the novel; you never see them making any decisions together. On the last count, there are a handful of decisions that are made throughout the book, but Gilbert makes up his mind and informs Anne afterwards -- sometimes she struggles against him a bit, but always capitulates in the end.
If that doesn't sound quite like the kind of husband Gilbert Blythe would make, or the kind of wife Anne Shirley would be, you're not alone in that opinion. I know that my discomfort springs mostly from my feminist, twenty-first century ideals, but it also comes partly from knowing these characters as well as a reader can.
So if the book isn't really about Anne and Gilbert's marriage, what is it about? Well, disregarding entirely the "show, don't tell" maxim of fiction, Montgomery allows her book to be dominated by the dialogue of two boilerplate characters, Miss Cornelia Bryant and Captain Jim Boyd. Miss Cornelia blames men for everything, and Captain Jim is a good-hearted hero. That's about all you need to know about them, as they're never really fleshed out beyond that. (One other character, Mrs. Leslie Moore, rounds out the cast -- more about her later.) From the amount of visiting each other Anne, Miss Cornelia, and Captain Jim do, you'd think they literally had nothing else to do. Wasn't life in the Victorian period complicated? They had to make and mend their own clothes, make all their food, write long letters . . . I find it hard to believe they could stand around jawing all day. And yet the book relies almost entirely on dialogue, with the occasional descriptive passage about the beauty of their little seaside town.
The aforementioned Mrs. Moore forms the requisite "fixer-upper" plot of the Anne series, and once again, it just screams deus ex machina. Montgomery's problem on this score is simply that she likes her main characters and will simply not allow them to do anything she might consider immoral or unethical. So while there would have been an intellectually honest, relatively true-to-life way to resolve Mrs. Moore's B-plot, Montgomery shunts this solution aside so Mrs. Moore can remain utterly blameless, a virtuous model of womanhood. Instead, Montgomery invents a ridiculous "out" for Mrs. Moore, all the while having her characters explain that it's "it wasn't one of those [occurrences] you read of in novels." If you need to have your characters say that, you're in trouble.
Recommended? No. So far, the only Anne books I can recommend are the first three. I'll read all of them in their turn and let you all know if any others are worth salvaging.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Anne of Windy Poplars (L.M. Montgomery)
Genre: Period fiction (takes place around 1890 in Canada)
Year Published: 1936
I suppose it speaks volumes about me that, flush with tons of new books from the holidays, I zero in on one series to read straight through. My personal faults notwithstanding, I must say I was rather disappointed with Anne of Windy Poplars. Looking at the Wikipedia entry on Anne of Green Gables, I see that this was written years later as an insert between Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams, so maybe that accounts for the distinct lack of characters from previous books. (That is, maybe Montgomery wrote in the beginning of House of Dreams that Anne hadn't spoken to them all in three years or something, and so essentially tied her own hands.)
I have several other problems with this book, though. First of all, much of it is written in the epistolary style, which I rarely have patience for. Secondly, in those letters, Montgomery is exceedingly coy; whenever Anne starts to write what could be construed as a "love letter," Montgomery just writes, "Several paragraphs omitted." It's really quite irritating.
Perhaps the most egregious problem with the book, though, is how focused it is on Anne solving the problems of near-total strangers while completely ignoring the realities of her day-to-day life. It is written that she goes home to Green Gables probably half a dozen times before we actually read about one of her trips in detail, and the only reason we get to come along on that narrative jaunt is because Anne is transforming her fellow teacher with the love that lives at Green Gables. We don't get to see her teaching at all. I don't believe Gilbert gets a single line of dialogue throughout the entire book. Meanwhile, Montgomery introduces the entire population of Summerside, a town we've never seen before and will probably never see again; Anne goes through and makes sure all the unmarried couples become engaged, finds a little girl's father, gives a woman her first night off from her tyrant mother, transforms the aforementioned teacher's life . . . lather, rinse, repeat.
Amusingly enough, Anne actually thinks to herself when one of her "fixes" goes wrong (perhaps the first, last, and only time this will ever happen), "Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of dea ex machina." It's not a good thing when I think to myself, "You'd better like it, or you're out of a job!"
I have a feeling I will be much more fond of the books that were written earlier in Montgomery's career. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose, though I hope my next book will veer off this path a bit.
Recommend? Not really. If you're a diehard Anne Shirley fan, I'm sure you'll get a kick out of it, but I don't think the events chronicled are at all vital to the continuity of the series, and you'll be left feeling somewhat cheated.
Year Published: 1936
I suppose it speaks volumes about me that, flush with tons of new books from the holidays, I zero in on one series to read straight through. My personal faults notwithstanding, I must say I was rather disappointed with Anne of Windy Poplars. Looking at the Wikipedia entry on Anne of Green Gables, I see that this was written years later as an insert between Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams, so maybe that accounts for the distinct lack of characters from previous books. (That is, maybe Montgomery wrote in the beginning of House of Dreams that Anne hadn't spoken to them all in three years or something, and so essentially tied her own hands.)
I have several other problems with this book, though. First of all, much of it is written in the epistolary style, which I rarely have patience for. Secondly, in those letters, Montgomery is exceedingly coy; whenever Anne starts to write what could be construed as a "love letter," Montgomery just writes, "Several paragraphs omitted." It's really quite irritating.
Perhaps the most egregious problem with the book, though, is how focused it is on Anne solving the problems of near-total strangers while completely ignoring the realities of her day-to-day life. It is written that she goes home to Green Gables probably half a dozen times before we actually read about one of her trips in detail, and the only reason we get to come along on that narrative jaunt is because Anne is transforming her fellow teacher with the love that lives at Green Gables. We don't get to see her teaching at all. I don't believe Gilbert gets a single line of dialogue throughout the entire book. Meanwhile, Montgomery introduces the entire population of Summerside, a town we've never seen before and will probably never see again; Anne goes through and makes sure all the unmarried couples become engaged, finds a little girl's father, gives a woman her first night off from her tyrant mother, transforms the aforementioned teacher's life . . . lather, rinse, repeat.
Amusingly enough, Anne actually thinks to herself when one of her "fixes" goes wrong (perhaps the first, last, and only time this will ever happen), "Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of dea ex machina." It's not a good thing when I think to myself, "You'd better like it, or you're out of a job!"
I have a feeling I will be much more fond of the books that were written earlier in Montgomery's career. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose, though I hope my next book will veer off this path a bit.
Recommend? Not really. If you're a diehard Anne Shirley fan, I'm sure you'll get a kick out of it, but I don't think the events chronicled are at all vital to the continuity of the series, and you'll be left feeling somewhat cheated.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Anne of the Island (L.M. Montgomery)
Genre: Period fiction (takes place around 1885 in Canada)
Year Published: 1915
Today I finished Anne of the Island, the third book in the Anne of Green Gables sequence. I will admit to having been totally entranced by Anne Shirley and her little world, even as it sometimes annoys me. I am somewhat unusual in that I only picked up Anne of Green Gables for the first time a few months ago, having never read it as a young girl. But I fell for Anne as so many have done before me.
This series has its faults; the one that I think is most glaring, that Montgomery tends to introduce problems for Anne merely to solve them two pages later, is probably more pronounced in Island than it has been in the previous two books. However, I was much more involved with the plot of Island than that of Anne of Avonlea (the second book). Anne's about my age for the last bit of Island, and she's finally old enough to resolve the question of where her relationship with Gilbert Blythe is going. I was definitely clutching the poor cover pretty hard toward the end when she finally has to face up to the fact that friendship has ceased to be enough on at least one of their parts. (I won't spoil it completely!) So on an emotional level, it hit me harder than the previous two books. And it should speak for itself that I went and picked up Anne of Windy Poplars (the next book) today at the secondhand shop.
Recommend? Yes, though this is not a series you can jump into at any point; you really have to start with Anne of Green Gables.
Year Published: 1915
Today I finished Anne of the Island, the third book in the Anne of Green Gables sequence. I will admit to having been totally entranced by Anne Shirley and her little world, even as it sometimes annoys me. I am somewhat unusual in that I only picked up Anne of Green Gables for the first time a few months ago, having never read it as a young girl. But I fell for Anne as so many have done before me.
This series has its faults; the one that I think is most glaring, that Montgomery tends to introduce problems for Anne merely to solve them two pages later, is probably more pronounced in Island than it has been in the previous two books. However, I was much more involved with the plot of Island than that of Anne of Avonlea (the second book). Anne's about my age for the last bit of Island, and she's finally old enough to resolve the question of where her relationship with Gilbert Blythe is going. I was definitely clutching the poor cover pretty hard toward the end when she finally has to face up to the fact that friendship has ceased to be enough on at least one of their parts. (I won't spoil it completely!) So on an emotional level, it hit me harder than the previous two books. And it should speak for itself that I went and picked up Anne of Windy Poplars (the next book) today at the secondhand shop.
Recommend? Yes, though this is not a series you can jump into at any point; you really have to start with Anne of Green Gables.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
