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osprey_archer) wrote2024-04-28 01:47 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2024-04-28 01:47 pm
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Book Review: Emily’s Quest
I love L. M. Montgomery’s Emily books, but it cannot be denied that the trilogy rather peters out in the third book. The problem, I think, is that the book rather loses sight of the center of Emily’s story. In the first two books, the unifying thread is Emily’s development as a writer, and both books end with Emily taking an important step on that journey.
In Emily of New Moon, Emily's favorite teacher Mr. Carpenter criticizes her work, ending by telling her that she has the makings of a real writer if she keeps at it—and Emily, of course, vows to keep at it. In Emily Climbs, Miss Royal invites Emily to New York City, where Miss Royal’s connections will smooth Emily’s climb up the “alpine path” as a writer—but Emily refuses. She has to take the harder road, not only as a Canadian author but an author rooted in a province that many see as a backwater.
In Emily’s Quest, however, the balance between Emily’s writing and Emily’s romances ends up getting out of kilter.
The book starts out strong. Mr. Carpenter dies, warning Emily with his dying breath, “Beware—of—italics.” Emily, devastated, nonetheless moves forward with her first novel: The Seller of Dreams. With Mr. Carpenter dead, she gives the book to her only remaining discerning critic: Dean.
But Dean hates the book. He hates it before he reads it, because he is jealous: the book, Emily’s writing as a whole, distract her from him. He hates it all the more after reading it, because he sees that it is good, that it will take her yet further from him; and so he tells her, “It’s a pretty little story, Emily. Pretty and flimsy and ephemeral as a rose-tinted cloud…”
Emily burns the book, then in a passion of regret rushes away, she knows not where—only to trip on Aunt Laura’s workbasket on the stairs, which leads to her spending months laid up in her room. Dean is her constant companion, the only light in this dark time in her life, and so at the end of the winter she agrees to marry him.
But in the end she just can’t stick it. She tells him that she doesn’t love him. Dean, his hopes flattened, at last admits that her book was good. This is what makes Dean such a haunting character, because you have evidence like this that he is capable of better things, and yet in the clinch he follows his worst instincts. Perhaps if you could have shared Emily with her writing, sir! But no. That was never an option.
And then Dean goes away ne’er to return, and slowly Emily takes up her pen again. But her writing, which has hitherto been the backbone of the series, even in those chapters where she was giving it up, now slips from center stage. Emily’s romance become the A-plot, just when the romance can least support that weight, because all obstacles to endgame Emily/Teddy have effectively been removed.
Dean is out of the picture. Perry finally stops proposing to Emily, and was never a serious threat anyway. Emily may be worried that Teddy love Ilse, but it’s impossible for the reader to worry about it when Teddy keeps drawing Emily’s face in all his magazine illustrations. (This is such a turn of the 20th century romance trope: the artist who always draws his beloved no matter who he is techncially supposed to drawing.) All that’s keeping these two kids apart is themselves, and admittedly the interference of Teddy’s strange mother (who, like Dean, is utterly warped by jealousy), but if Teddy ever got it together for two seconds to gaze at Emily in the moonlight and murmur, “Emily, do you…?”, they would get together like that
Unfortunately there is still half a book to fill, and rather than filling it with Emily’s writing journey (oh, Emily writes a best-selling novel, but that’s kind of an afterthought), Montgomery fills it with misunderstandings. These misunderstandings culminate in Teddy and Ilse almost getting married. Fortunately Perry is in a car accident on the morning of the wedding, and literally minutes before the ceremony Ilse tears out to see if he is dead, because Perry is the man she has always really loved. ILU Ilse, thank God someone in this book finally stops playing romantic chicken and just ’fesses up to being in love.
In Emily of New Moon, Emily's favorite teacher Mr. Carpenter criticizes her work, ending by telling her that she has the makings of a real writer if she keeps at it—and Emily, of course, vows to keep at it. In Emily Climbs, Miss Royal invites Emily to New York City, where Miss Royal’s connections will smooth Emily’s climb up the “alpine path” as a writer—but Emily refuses. She has to take the harder road, not only as a Canadian author but an author rooted in a province that many see as a backwater.
In Emily’s Quest, however, the balance between Emily’s writing and Emily’s romances ends up getting out of kilter.
The book starts out strong. Mr. Carpenter dies, warning Emily with his dying breath, “Beware—of—italics.” Emily, devastated, nonetheless moves forward with her first novel: The Seller of Dreams. With Mr. Carpenter dead, she gives the book to her only remaining discerning critic: Dean.
But Dean hates the book. He hates it before he reads it, because he is jealous: the book, Emily’s writing as a whole, distract her from him. He hates it all the more after reading it, because he sees that it is good, that it will take her yet further from him; and so he tells her, “It’s a pretty little story, Emily. Pretty and flimsy and ephemeral as a rose-tinted cloud…”
Emily burns the book, then in a passion of regret rushes away, she knows not where—only to trip on Aunt Laura’s workbasket on the stairs, which leads to her spending months laid up in her room. Dean is her constant companion, the only light in this dark time in her life, and so at the end of the winter she agrees to marry him.
But in the end she just can’t stick it. She tells him that she doesn’t love him. Dean, his hopes flattened, at last admits that her book was good. This is what makes Dean such a haunting character, because you have evidence like this that he is capable of better things, and yet in the clinch he follows his worst instincts. Perhaps if you could have shared Emily with her writing, sir! But no. That was never an option.
And then Dean goes away ne’er to return, and slowly Emily takes up her pen again. But her writing, which has hitherto been the backbone of the series, even in those chapters where she was giving it up, now slips from center stage. Emily’s romance become the A-plot, just when the romance can least support that weight, because all obstacles to endgame Emily/Teddy have effectively been removed.
Dean is out of the picture. Perry finally stops proposing to Emily, and was never a serious threat anyway. Emily may be worried that Teddy love Ilse, but it’s impossible for the reader to worry about it when Teddy keeps drawing Emily’s face in all his magazine illustrations. (This is such a turn of the 20th century romance trope: the artist who always draws his beloved no matter who he is techncially supposed to drawing.) All that’s keeping these two kids apart is themselves, and admittedly the interference of Teddy’s strange mother (who, like Dean, is utterly warped by jealousy), but if Teddy ever got it together for two seconds to gaze at Emily in the moonlight and murmur, “Emily, do you…?”, they would get together like that
Unfortunately there is still half a book to fill, and rather than filling it with Emily’s writing journey (oh, Emily writes a best-selling novel, but that’s kind of an afterthought), Montgomery fills it with misunderstandings. These misunderstandings culminate in Teddy and Ilse almost getting married. Fortunately Perry is in a car accident on the morning of the wedding, and literally minutes before the ceremony Ilse tears out to see if he is dead, because Perry is the man she has always really loved. ILU Ilse, thank God someone in this book finally stops playing romantic chicken and just ’fesses up to being in love.
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Dean is in so many ways such a bad romantic choice and what he does to Emily is unforgivable and yet, all the same, I do always have a sneaking sympathy for him. It's that feeling in the last act of a tragedy where you hope that perhaps THIS TIME it will be different and the characters won't seal their own fates with their own fool choices, and of course Dean always makes the same awful choice... I think in some ways it would be an easier story to bear if his loss of Emily's love (or failure to ever win Emily's love) were a plain comeuppance for his lies about her book; if she found out and rejected him for it. But he only tells her that he lied about her book after she's already rejected him.
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I could never forgive Dean for what he did, and I LOATHED the sorta love triangle. Emily/Ilse 4eva! I haven't reread it in forever, though, I might have a less vehement reaction now.
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And does so not just to clear his conscience, but because he seems to understand that if he left now looking only devoted and unloved and tragic, he would always be able to hold the guilt of the jilting over her, a perfect revenge for a possessive man and he doesn't take it: that's what he's honest enough for at the last. It actually is excruciating.
More than deeding Emily and Teddy the Disappointed House, the fact that he writes her a serious comment on The Moral of the Rose has always felt to me like the most hopeful thing about Dean. Even if he has to feel himself no longer in competition with her art to be honest about it: he could still have just not written, and he makes a point to.
I like all the professional stuff in Emily's Quest. It's technical: rejection slips and rewrites, trying not to believe only the bad reviews (and overthinking all of them no matter what), presented as actual work rather than pure inspiration. So much of it is romance, though, and romance that has never worked for me. I don't think it formed my allergy to misunderstanding, but it sure didn't help.
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"Was there a little impish chuckle at the end of the words? Aunt Louisa always declared there was. Graceless old Mr. Carpenter had died laughing—saying something about Italians. Of course he was delirious. But Aunt Louisa always felt it had been a very unedifying deathbed. She was thankful that few such had come in her experience."
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as somebody who never read those books, i read this quote like it was one of those reddit aita posts that start out like 'am i the asshole for not getting my husband a gift' and end up with the commenters strongly urging the op to get a lawyer, bodyguard and possibly an exorcist, and fifty updates. he did WHAT omg.
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Emily/Ilse is truly the strongest pairing in the book, but I do think it would be nice for Emily to have a partner who cares about (and will say nice things about!) her writing. Valancy Stirling to her John Foster.
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Although I suspect that everyone in Blair Water gossiped for months about Emily's jilted lover giving Emily and her husband the house that Emily and said jilted lover were meant to live in.
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*punches Dean in the face*
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