Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables was the choice for this month's bookclub. Although I had read it as a child, I could barely remember it and for some reason, never realised there is a whole series of the Avonlea books. Written in 1908, this book has a certain country charm. Although it is seen as a book for children, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anne is adopted at the age of 11 by an ageing brother and sister who actually wanted to adopt a boy to help them on the farm. Anne arrives instead and her stay looks like it might be short-lived. However, given the title of the book, we know that Anne will stay.
Anne is an exuberent, intelligent, imaginative and creative child. She enthuses about the beauty of nature and to many readers over the decades, Avonlea must seem to be heaven on earth as the changes in the seasons are described with magnificent detail.   Perhaps because of the lack of attention, she chats incessantly and the speed of her speech is emphasized by the length of the passage and the lack of punctuation.  She daydreams and is one of those children who tries to do good but mishaps seem to happen from putting liniment in a cake to dyeing her red hair green.
Anne grows increasingly close to her adoptive parents. Matthew deliberately stays out of her upbringing seeing it as woman's work considering she is a girl yet he clearly wants to ensure she is happy and content, even noticing that puff sleeves are almost essential for girls her age and arranging to have a dress made for her. Marilla is stricter initially and doesn't find describing her love for the child to be easy but slowly you can see that while they help Anne's lot, she also brings so much to their lives.
We follow Anne's adventures from the age of 11 to her leaving school and passing examinations. Her hard work ethic and intelligence are shown as is her stubbornness and her unwillingness to forgive Gilbert Blythe for calling her 'carrots' - this is emphasized by their academic competitiveness. Considering it was written in 1908, it is good to see schooling and academia being seen as important, even though it is an expensive luxury for some. Some parents see it as unnecessary for girls too and various viewpoints are put forward.
I'm going to suggest this book to my daughter in a year or two, it will be interesting to see her take on it. Plus, now that I know there is a full collection of Anne of Green Gables with 12 books in the collection, I think it will have to be a birthday present for one of us sometime soon. I want to know what happened to Anne, if she married Gilbert, if she became a teacher, if she had children, if she continued to live in Green Gables and stayed as creative, fun-loving and imaginative.

Review of Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Our latest bookclub choice, Plainsong by Kent Haruf, was a lovely read. It reminded me of Steinbeck's writing somehow. Set in a small town Holt in Colorado, it has a timeless feel to it and yet feels like it is set in the 60s. The book centres around a few main characters - two bachelor brothers in their sixties who live 17 miles from the town, a young girl who falls pregnant and is disowned by her mother, Tom Guthrie who is a teacher at the secondary school, his two young sons, his wife undergoing depression who moves away and another teacher Maggie Jones. The plot serves to tie these characters together in one way or another during the course of the novel. As with all small towns, everyone seems to know each other's business and there are undercurrents of tension and of fear as well as neighbourliness and support.

The plot is fairly simple and moments of tension are rare. However, when they did occur, I could feel my reading speed up until I knew the characters were okay again, at least for the moment.  The language is beautiful and makes reading this novel such a pleasure - it almost seems musical and lilting. I was initially slightly irritated by the absence of punctuation marks around the speech but got used to it quickly and their absence seemed to add to the flow of the language.  The descriptive passages are long and speech is brief which seems to also symbolise the brevity of speech amongst the characters. It seems as they get to know each other better that speech becomes less necessary and the same goes for the reader - we don't need their speech as much - the beauty is in the quality of the imagery. The 2 older brothers in particular have a lovely attitude, they seem to take life one day at a time, respect nature and only plan ahead when it is necessary. I also liked their reflections on nature, on birth and death, their love for the land and their animals as well as their growing regard for a young pregnant girl.

There's two more books in the series and I'm looking forward to reading both of them Eventide and Benediction, both of which deal with characters in the same town in years to come.