Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Emily of New Moon
Excerpt 2!!
I just love this part – when Emily first goes to New Moon, after her father’s death. Everything is new and strange, and her grief is still fresh … so all of her impressions come rushing at her. Emily is very disoriented. And Aunt Elizabeth, to say the least, is NOT sympathetic to the whims and ups and downs of Emily’s personality. She should be seen and not heard. She will not be allowed to ‘wallow’ in grief (uhm, her father died 2 days ago??) Etc. The rules come fast and furious at Emily. New Moon is beautiful and mysterious and interesting – but it is not at ALL comforting at first. Especially not the first night … when Elizabeth sternly and coldly refuses to let Emily have her own room. She is too young. She must sleep with Elizabeth. Emily – who is only a child – still has a strong sense of herself, a strong sense of boundaries – she needs solitude, alone time … This is NOT respected at New Moon. Elizabeth will NEVER get this about Emily. It is one of their most ongoing struggles.
I love the writing in the “New Moon” chapter and also in the next chapter “The Book of Yesterday”. – Emily’s arrival at her new home. It’s so vivid – the shadowy kitchen, the hanging hams, the tall spruces, the dark house crowded with Victorian furniture – Emily grew up in a shabby little house in the woods, with maybe 3 or 4 rooms … She is agog at her new surroundings, overwhelmed, exhausted, almost hallucinatory.
She wakes up the next morning and spends a couple of days hanging out with Cousin Jimmy (a marvelous character, my God, isn’t he great?) – and he tells her the stories of the Murry family – a long established kind of intimidating family – a family Emily is part of but she knows nothing about.
When her dead mother, the beloved Juliet Murry, married a poor writer (Emily’s father) – her family disowned her. They turned their backs. They can be very cold. Emily knows NONE of her own history.
Oh, and one thing. This chapter kind of sets up the whole rest of the series. Things are pointed out in this chapter that will only be resolved in the THIRD book of the series. Foreshadowing all over the place. Lucy Maud knew what the hell she was doing.
Oh, and the “Here I stay” story in the excerpt below is true. It was part of Lucy Maud’s family history.
Excerpt from Emily of New Moon
Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home; but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday to her.
“Why are all the Murrays buried here?” asked Emily. “Is it really because they are too good to be buried with common people?”
“No — no, pussy. We don’t carry our pride as far as that. When old Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That’s why the old Murrays were buried here — and later on we kept it up because we wanted to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair Water.”
“That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy,” said Emily.
“So it is — out of one of my poems.”
“I kind of like the idea of a ‘sclusive burying ground like this,” said Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept graves.
Cousin Jimmy chuckled.
“And yet they say you ain’t a Murray,” he said. “Murray and Byrd and Starr — and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much mistaken.”
“Shipley?”
“Yes — Hugh Murray’s wife – your great-great-grandmother — was a Shipley — an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New Moon?”
“No.”
“They were bound for Quebec — hadn’t any notion of coming to P.E.I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of seasickness coming out — never seemed to get her sea-legs — so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, ‘Here I stay.’ And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh — he was young Hugh then, of course — coaxed and stormed and raged and argued — and even cried, I’ve been told — but Mary wouldn’t be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P.E. Island.”
“I’m glad it happened like that,” said Emily.
“So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily — it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner — that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it.”
Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”
“That’s how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good husband to her — and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family — an dhe never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out.”
Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.
