Montgomery writing about village gossip is delightful. Montgomery writing about ethereal fantasies and really anything involving Paul Irving is insufferable. None of these count as improvements to Avonlea society, as far as I’m concerned.Īs usual, it is Anne’s humblest adventures that are the most entertaining. We meet Mr Harrison, a grouchy farmer with a foul-mouthed parrot Davy and Dora, twin relatives who Marilla takes in after they are orphaned Paul Irving, the most sickeningly sweet child ever written and Miss Lavendar, who is even more prone to silly fantasies than Anne. The book still has its moments but Montgomery, desperately short of plot ideas, covers by introducing new characters at every turn.
(There is a very good discussion of this in The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly.) She has relapsed to a stage which readers of the first book thought she had outgrown and no one benefits from it. In this book, she embraces those melodramatic tendencies wholeheartedly, becomes dreamier than ever without ever really coming back down to earth, and is insufferably condescending to her more prosaic friends. When the first book ended, Anne was maturing and recognizing (with humour) her tendency towards indulging in overly dramatic flights of fancy. Published in 1909, only a year after Anne’s debut, Montgomery seems to have lost her sense of humour – and her sense of characterization. How could I leave Anne after just one book? So I read on, quickly progressing through first Anne of Avonlea and then Anne of the Island.Īnne of Avonlea is an odd book or perhaps it is just a very typical second book, written in a rush to capitalise on the extraordinary success of Anne of Green Gables. Or at least I can’t, particularly when it is this series which so dominated my childhood reading. After reading Anne of Green Gables in July, I was reminded of an eternal truth about books in a series: you can never read just one.
0 kommentar(er)
