The Books: Anne of the Island (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/children’s books:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, Book 3) by L.M. Montgomery.

I love this one. I love all of them but I love this one especially. This is the story of Anne’s college years – and so many people come into the story here who become Anne’s lifelong friends – and I just love them all. I LOVE Philippa (Phil, for short). She is a college chum – and a group of them end up renting a house together. Phil, Anne, Priscilla and Stella. These four girls make up the heart and soul of this book. You just wish you lived in that town and you could go hang out at Patty’s Place (the name of their house). It’s all very exciting – their classes, professors, their various romances … Each girl is distinct. Lucy Maud is so good at letting us know WHO someone is, and then keeping that character consistent (through multiple books, written over a 30 year period – now that is quite a feat). Phil doesn’t talk like Priscilla – you could tell who was speaking even if Lucy Maud didn’t write: “Phil said” or “Priscilla said”.

Gilbert Blythe is also at college – (as well as google-eyed Charlie Sloane. Poor Charlie Sloane.) He and Anne hang out together. They are “friends”. Any time Gilbert tries to make it something more, he gets the brush-off. But Gilbert is now on the other side of the fence – he can’t let it go. He tries to be her friend – but his feelings for her are more, and that’s final. Anne, for reasons best known to herself (it has something to do with her Ideal Man, and Gilbert just is NOT that) just doesn’t want to “go there” with Gilbert. She still has girlhood dreams of Prince Charming, and getting swept away by a tall dark stranger, and all that. Gilbert has been her friend since they were 11. He’s studying to be a doctor. He just doesn’t have that romantic aura of mystery. Gilbert goes through hell in this book. Eventually, he just comes out and states his intentions (GO, GILBERT!) He stops trying to move the conversation towards romance, or the future – and says what he means and what he wants. He tells her he loves her, and he wants to marry her. Anne, heart-stricken (because she does really “like” Gilbert) tells him no. And to please never mention it again. Their friendship is kind of ruined. Lucy Maud has one paragraph where she describes Gilbert’s response – and it says it all:

There was another pause — so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert’s face was white to the lips. And his eyes — but Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or — horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert’s face?

That happens halfway through the book. In the second half, Anne does meet a tall dark romantic stranger. During a rainstorm in the park, they meet up in a gazebo to keep dry. He is new at school. He is rich. His name is Royal Gardner. I mean, come ON. As a reader, it’s frustrating – because you read about Royal – and you see how he says all the right things, lovey-dovey things, and he sends her flowers, and blah blah … but … but … how on earth could they possibly be right together? But we’ve all made mistakes in love. We’ve all put our Ideals before Reality. Well, maybe not all of us, but many of us. Anne sees the trappings, and decides that he is Prince Charming. No matter that he doesn’t really have a sense of humor. No matter that his mother is a total nightmare (the story of her surprise visit to Patty’s Place is so funny!! Of course she shows up unannounced on the day the girls are cleaning). Anne is “in love”. All of her friends, though, are kind of skeptical. They like Roy, but …

This is not the only storyline in the book, of course. Other things happen: Diana gets married. Ruby Gillis develops consumption (the chapter where Anne goes to visit Ruby at night, and they sit in the moonlit garden and talk about the death that is approraching – is one of my favorite chapters in the book. SO GOOD. Her writing …) Anne also does some summer-school teaching. The story of Phil’s romance (or – her last romance, I should say) is wonderful. Phil is a great character: she’s rich, she’s smart, she’s gorgeous, and she is not serious about anything. Or, no, that’s not true: she’s serious about math. She’s a math whiz. She gets straight As. But other than her schoolwork, all she does is date 3 or 4 guys at the same time, keeping everyone hanging. And she has two guys at home waiting for her every word (uhm – Alec and Alonzo are their names, of course). If you look just at the surface of Phil, you might think she was a vain and silly girl. And maybe she is. But she also admits it. She says flat out, “I can’t be poor. I’m just going to have fun while I can – and then marry a rich rich man.” She seems to have a huge ego – and no sense that she could actually lose herself in someone else, that she could actually fall in love. Until she does. And of course it is with someone so inappropriate for her (in the eyes of the world, and her blueblood family) – someone she never would have picked out for herself – someone who has none of the “qualifications” she has listed for a husband … but … she falls head over heels. Why? Because he makes her laugh, and he also looks at her as though he SEES her. He sees right THROUGH her. He sees past the vanity, and the clothes, and the fun-girl facade – and sees the serious-hearted beautiful soul inside. She feels revealed. He is a minister. He is POOR. But she falls head over heels. And put a fork in Phil, she’s done. No more dating, she kicks all the hovering guys to the curb, and decides: well, I guess I’m going to be a poor minister’s wife. Because there’s no other man for me. There’s something in that whole Phil subplot that I really love, and always have. To me, it shows Lucy Maud’s understanding of the depths we can go to to fool ourselves, and also – that sometimes all it takes is one person to say: “Yes. I SEE you. You know I do. I SEE you.” And the best part is that Phil is the LAST person you would think would have such an experience. Isn’t that the way it so often goes in life?

What are some of the other episodes you all love?? So many good ones to choose from this book.

Here’s an excerpt. Anne is home in Avonlea for her summer vacation. Gilbert has proposed to her – and she said no. Not only does Anne have to deal with her own grief that she has ruined a good friendship, she also has to deal with all of her friends saying: “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, ANNE SHIRLEY?”

Excerpt from Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, Book 3) by L.M. Montgomery.

Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June; and when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving. Paul and Charlotta the ourth came “home” for July and August.

Echo Lodge was the scene of gaeities once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.

“Miss Lavender” had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was beautiful to see.

“But I don’t call her ‘mother’ just by itself,” he explained to Anne. “You see, that name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can’t give it to any one else. You know, teacher. But I call her ‘Mother Lavender’ and I love her next best to father. I — I even love her a little better than you, teacher.”

“Which is just as it ought to be,” answered Anne.

Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly “kindred spirits”.

Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.

“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma’am?” she demanded anxiously.

“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”

“I’m real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don’t want no Yankee acent. Not that I’ve a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma’am. They’re real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time.”

Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore — Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora’s elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight.”

“Didn’t you find your Rock People?” asked Anne.

Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.

“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all,” he said. “Nora was there — but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed.”

“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,” said Anne. “You have grown too old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanged boat with the sail of moonshine’ and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.”

“You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did,” said old Mrs. irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.

“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.”

“But it isn’t — it is given us to exchange our thoughts,” said Mrs. Irving anxiously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not understand epigrams.

Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history. Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to general pleasantness of life.

“What a nice play-time this has been,” said Anne. “I feel like a giant refreshed. And it’s only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport, and Redmond, and Patty’s Place. Patty’s Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavender. I feel as if I had two houses — one at Green Gables and one at Patt’s Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn’t seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little I couldn’t see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now ”tis a handbreadth, ’tis a tale.'”

“Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?” asked Miss Lavender quietly.

“I am just as much Gilbert’s friend as ever I was, Miss Lavender.”

Miss Lavender shook her head.

“I see something’s gone wrong, Anne. I’m going to be impertinent and ask what. Have you quarrelled?”

“No, it’s only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can’t give him more.”

“Are you sure of that, Anne?”

“Perfectly sure.”

“I’m very, very sorry.”

“I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne petulantly.

“Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne — that is why. You needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s a fact.”