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osprey_archer) wrote2023-11-02 08:26 am
osprey_archer) wrote2023-11-02 08:26 am
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Book Review: Anne of Green Gables
My visit to PEI so inspired me that I’ve decided to do a complete read-through of L. M. Montgomery’s twenty novels, in publication order, starting of course with Anne of Green Gables, her first and most famous book.
(I always think that’s such a monkey’s-paw situation for an author: your first book comes out, and it’s phenomenally successful… so much so that nothing else you ever do ever touches it! Hard to peak so early.)
Also hard to review a book so beloved and iconic, so rather than attempt any kind of overview of its many charms - Anne and Diana! Anne and Gilbert! Anne and Matthew, Anne and Marilla; Anne, simply Anne! - I’m going to focus on Montgomery’s worldbuilding, if that’s the right word for it. Of course she’s not worldbuilding in the same sense as a fantasy author, because the world that she’s describing did exist, although even at the time she wrote the book it was fading into the past .
But for the reader, the effect can be very much the same as reading about, say, Middle-Earth. Montgomery’s Prince Edward Island is an enchanted place. In real life, you might be a philistine who could walk past a million white narcissus blossoms without a backward glance; but as you read, Montgomery’s love imbues every flower with such magic that you love them too.
Montgomery’s ability to create this feeling of stepping into a pocket universe is, in my opinion, one of the reasons that her books have endured so long. And it is, of course, the reason why Montgomery’s hometown Cavendish is now a tourist trap that probably makes nature-loving Montgomery spin in her grave: everyone wants to visit, and between us we’ve loved the place to death.
(At the B&B I met a couple who had visited the island about thirty years ago, and they commented that Cavendish had been much less developed then. I was glad to hear that the worst of it happened decades after Montgomery’s death.)
But although Cavendish is all built up, in other places the past lingers. One day I walked a trail between Bonshaw and Strathgartney Provincial Parks, and at a couple of places an old cart road overlapped the trail: overgrown with grass now, but the ruts still visible, and the high sides of the road left as the carts gradually wore their path down into the soil. Montgomery must have driven on such roads, and likewise Anne, and it was lovely to get this little glimpse of their world still embedded in the kind of wooded landscape that Montgomery loved so much.
(I always think that’s such a monkey’s-paw situation for an author: your first book comes out, and it’s phenomenally successful… so much so that nothing else you ever do ever touches it! Hard to peak so early.)
Also hard to review a book so beloved and iconic, so rather than attempt any kind of overview of its many charms - Anne and Diana! Anne and Gilbert! Anne and Matthew, Anne and Marilla; Anne, simply Anne! - I’m going to focus on Montgomery’s worldbuilding, if that’s the right word for it. Of course she’s not worldbuilding in the same sense as a fantasy author, because the world that she’s describing did exist, although even at the time she wrote the book it was fading into the past .
But for the reader, the effect can be very much the same as reading about, say, Middle-Earth. Montgomery’s Prince Edward Island is an enchanted place. In real life, you might be a philistine who could walk past a million white narcissus blossoms without a backward glance; but as you read, Montgomery’s love imbues every flower with such magic that you love them too.
Montgomery’s ability to create this feeling of stepping into a pocket universe is, in my opinion, one of the reasons that her books have endured so long. And it is, of course, the reason why Montgomery’s hometown Cavendish is now a tourist trap that probably makes nature-loving Montgomery spin in her grave: everyone wants to visit, and between us we’ve loved the place to death.
(At the B&B I met a couple who had visited the island about thirty years ago, and they commented that Cavendish had been much less developed then. I was glad to hear that the worst of it happened decades after Montgomery’s death.)
But although Cavendish is all built up, in other places the past lingers. One day I walked a trail between Bonshaw and Strathgartney Provincial Parks, and at a couple of places an old cart road overlapped the trail: overgrown with grass now, but the ruts still visible, and the high sides of the road left as the carts gradually wore their path down into the soil. Montgomery must have driven on such roads, and likewise Anne, and it was lovely to get this little glimpse of their world still embedded in the kind of wooded landscape that Montgomery loved so much.