The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 154)

 

It has been a rough couple of weeks, reading-wise. But you have to expect some rocks and briars once you leave your familiar cow path and strike out for unexplored books. I can take the rough with the smooth. Besides, I usually have more fun writing about books I don't like than the books I do like, so I'm not complaining.

Still, it would be nice to read a good book again. I downloaded several possible candidates, and today's books, since this is a double-header review, are the books I chose to begin with. I have to believe the first one is a reread. I'm almost certain this was one of the bedtime book I read to my kids when they were young, but I have no clear memory of doing so. However, what I can say is that the TV series is perhaps my favorite TV show of all time. So what can go wrong?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery  A

As it turned out, nothing. In fact, the book was far better than I expected it to be. As I said in the lede, the 1985 TV version of Anne of Green Gables, including the sequel may well be my favorite TV show of all time. (I don't count the third entry, "Continuing Story' as "canon", at least for me.) I know they have made a new version a few years ago, but Megan Follows is, and will always be, Anne Shirley. I have the complete collection on DVDs, and will have to watch it again on some cold rainy day.

Do I need to outline the story? Mathew, a very shy sixty-year-old bachelor and his spinster sister, Marilla, live on a farm on Prince Edward Island Canada decide to send for an orphan boy to help around the farm. There is a mix up, and they end up with the 11 year old Anne Shirley, a very sweet young girl with a vivid imagination and much given to talking. She brings a new life to the old folks with her various escapades. The story is lush evocation of nature and life in a small community at the turn of the last century. If you haven't read the book, do so. It is free on Gutenberg. And/or watch the 1985 version of the book and its sequel. I don't recommend the the third series with Anne all grown up, set during WW l.

Spoilers ahead!

I was surprised to discover just how closely that TV show followed the book. There were minor changes. For example, Anne was reciting The Lady of Shalott in the TV version, but the book has them reenacting Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine, which I gather is the same story, but not the ballad. In the book, Mathew dies in the doorway of the house after reading that the bank where they have all their money has failed, with both Anne and Marilla present, instead of the field with Anne alone. Various incidents in the book take place in other places in the TV show, but I recognized all of them from the TV show.

Anne of Avonlea by L M Montgomery   B+

This book continues the story of Anne from the point where Anne of Green Gables left off. Both of these stories are episodic in nature. However, in the first book there was much more of an over-arching plot, that of Anne fitting into her new life with Marilla and Mathew and life in Avonlea that served to tie all the episodes together. That strong over-arching plot is missing in this book, making it more of a series of episodes and character studies rather than being driven by a unified plot.

This story recounts Anne's two years as a teacher in the Avonlea school she graduated from just a year prior. We get to meet and know half a dozen new characters and their backstories. Anne still gets into trouble, but is now much more grown up. 

While there are a couple if incidents I recognized from either the original TV show, or its sequel, much of this book is new material to me. For example, in this book Marilla takes in twin 6 year old orphans on a temporary basis, the children of a third cousin, whose uncle is supposed to come and pick them up in the following summer. This never happened in the TV show.

I consider these books historical fiction, though they were written as contemporary fiction. While they no doubt idealize certain aspects of the  contemporary life of the time, they also highlight certain aspects that might be easily overlooked by today's writer setting a story in that period, or if not overlooked, over emphasized. One such aspect is the commonplaceness of death in these stories. People of all ages die in these stories. No doubt some for the convenience of the plot, but the fact that not only infants and old people in their 50's - 70's die, but middle aged people get sick and die is taken as a matter of course. Sad, but that's life. Or that you had today's high school seniors working as teachers in one room school houses with one year of special training - until, of course they got married, and then they would be fired... Things like this could be found with research, and are, but too often these commonplace facts of life that seem strange to us now, get emphasized in contemporary historical fiction because their unfamiliarity, distorting ever-so-slightly the times they present.

I have the next two books Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars, downloaded. They seem to be the sources of the the Sequel series, with Anne as a young woman in college and as a teacher at a private school. We'll have to see how soon I get around to them.