Book Review: Rilla of Ingleside
Mar. 10th, 2024 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI approached Rilla of Ingleside with a vague formless dread that quickly took on a precise shape as I read. "Ah yes," I remembered, "this is the book that's utterly imbued with the crushing dread of life on the home front, as you await every mail with your breath catching in your throat lest it bring news that your soldier boy is dead."
(In other sources, you'll occasionally find soldiers complaining that everyone back home is having a wonderful time. "The war's just a game to them!" they cry bitterly. This may ironically have been the result of everyone back home trying to keep their chins up so as not to burden their soldier boys with the fact that every moment of every day was consumed with fear over what might be happening in France.)
This is very well-written! Super evocative! You find your own nerves tightening up every time someone receives a telegram! But I don't read L. M. Montgomery to have my nerves screwed up to the breaking point, I read her for hilarious childhood mishaps and numinous nature descriptions that drift right up to the border of fairyland (I've always wished she wrote a novel that drifted right over that border, just to see what she'd do with it), so although the book is from a technical standpoint excellent, I personally am glad to be done reading it.
And that (for now) is the end of the Green Gables saga. Moving on into Emily of New Moon, in which we return to the land of childhood mishaps and lushly evocative nature descriptions! Plus one of my very favorite Montgomery heroines.
(In other sources, you'll occasionally find soldiers complaining that everyone back home is having a wonderful time. "The war's just a game to them!" they cry bitterly. This may ironically have been the result of everyone back home trying to keep their chins up so as not to burden their soldier boys with the fact that every moment of every day was consumed with fear over what might be happening in France.)
This is very well-written! Super evocative! You find your own nerves tightening up every time someone receives a telegram! But I don't read L. M. Montgomery to have my nerves screwed up to the breaking point, I read her for hilarious childhood mishaps and numinous nature descriptions that drift right up to the border of fairyland (I've always wished she wrote a novel that drifted right over that border, just to see what she'd do with it), so although the book is from a technical standpoint excellent, I personally am glad to be done reading it.
And that (for now) is the end of the Green Gables saga. Moving on into Emily of New Moon, in which we return to the land of childhood mishaps and lushly evocative nature descriptions! Plus one of my very favorite Montgomery heroines.
