Book Review: Emily of Deep Valley

[osprey_archer]

Maud Hart Lovelace’s Emily of Deep Valley is one of my favorite Deep Valley books, and it’s also something of an odd duck. Winona and Carney, the other two characters to get their own spinoff books, were both powerful secondary characters in the original series. Emily Webster, by contrast, is never even mentioned in the Betsy-Tacy series proper.

She’s a few years younger than Betsy and her Crowd, a shy, serious high school student who has been raised mostly by her grandfather after her parents died young. Her grandfather, a Civil War veteran, is loving, a little forgetful, not so much old-fashioned as completely unaware of changes in attitudes since his own youth. It doesn’t occur to him that Emily might want to go to college, and Emily, aware that her aging grandfather can no longer look after himself, doesn’t tell him.

But she nonetheless struggles when all her high school friends go off to college, leaving her alone and immured, as she feels, in her little house out past the slough. As the autumn passes, she sinks into a slough of despair, and the rest of the book is about Emily’s decision to fight her way back out. No, she is not going to college, but that doesn’t mean her education is over: she can continue to learn, continue to grow, and although this may not be the life she initially wanted, she can nonetheless build a life that she’s happy to live.

I first read this book not long after I quit grad school, and although there are obvious differences between my life and Emily’s, I had a similar feeling of finding myself stuck in a life that wasn’t what I wanted, with the same feeling that there was nothing I could do to change it, and it was such a relief, a breath of fresh air, to see Emily finding ways that she could change her life.

She takes up piano lessons again; starts taking dance lessons; begins reading a biography of Lincoln with her grandfather; starts up a Browning Club. Little changes lead to bigger changes, invitations to dances, new friends, a romance…

I enjoy Lovelace’s romances, but I think I enjoy even more her failed romances. In this book, Emily has a painful crush on her debate club teammate Don, a brilliant, moody, sulky boy with whom she has long, deep talks about literature on the train to debate tournaments, even though he doesn’t pay much attention to her at school.

Catnip for a bright, sensitive, lonely high school girl, in other words. It’s fascinating to watch Emily’s feelings for him develop over the course of the book. Even at the beginning, she has a clear understanding of his faults, and over time that understanding deepens - and yet at first, this deeper understanding doesn’t undercut her feelings for him at all! If anything, it only intensifies her crush.

It’s only once she has a standard of comparison - men who pay attention to her whenever she’s around, instead of just when they’re on the debate train together - that she begins to feel just how wearing his faults are. True, his moodiness gives him a romantically Byronic air; but how much more romantic is a man who loves you so much that he is always letting you know it.

Comments

[luzula]

When I saw the title of the post, I thought you had uncovered a long-lost L M Montgomery book!

Even at the beginning, she has a clear understanding of his faults, and over time that understanding deepens - and yet at first, this deeper understanding doesn’t undercut her feelings for him at all! If anything, it only intensifies her crush.
A recognizable feeling...

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's a super LMM title! Although I think I've seen titles in a similar vein from other authors in the same era. Perhaps it was the "An X of Y and Z" title of its time...

Also, since Emily doesn't appear in the Betsy-Tacy books otherwise, probably Maud Hart Lovelace wanted readers to know just from the title that this is nonetheless a related book.

[lokifan]

Oh, this sounds great. Failed romances and finding other ways to learn are still pretty unusual for YA.

[osprey_archer]

I thought it was particularly bold of Lovelace to make the actual love interest someone who doesn't even show up till nearly halfway through the book, long after readers have met and perhaps gotten attached to Don. Risky business with a romance plotline, but she just goes for it.

[asakiyume]

I came back to this entry because twice now this book has been recommended to me, and I wanted to see what you had written about it (having apparently missed reading it when you first posted it!)

I really love what you describe about finding a way forward when the life you thought you might have, or at least that you imagined you would like, is cut off. I love your descriptions of the things she does, and that they do lead to other things.

Please spoil me for this: does she find a mate, or does the book end with her single?

ETA: Aha! If I had read comments, I would have seen that she does find a better love interest. But does she end up with said love interest?

[osprey_archer]

She does find a mate! Lovelace's Deep Valley books are comfortingly dependable in that all the characters you care about will reach happy ends.

[asakiyume]

That's excellent. Thank you, Maude!