Auido Book Review(s)
Anne of Green Gables - The CollectionAuthor: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)
Collection of six books written between 1908-1921
Audio books narrated by: Beth Kesler (2021)
Total length: 55 hrs 18 min
(Note: The same collection is available for Kindle, for less than 1 dollar.)
I listened to the whole Audible collection during February and into the month of March. The original Anne of Green Gables book I have read many times. The second and third I've read before as well, but never the last three.
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| My Swedish copy of Anne of Green Gables from the 1960s |
Book 1: Anne of Green Gables (1908), is a well known classic; and for me it's one I've kept returning to now and then over the years, ever since I first read it in my pre-teens. (My own copy in Swedish was printed in 1961 but probably bought a few years later.)
This book was first published in 1908. It tells the story of Anne Shirley, a talkative orphan girl with vivid imagination, who is mistakenly sent to live with two middle-aged, unmarried siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, on their farm Green Gables in the fictional town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The brother and sister originally intended to adopt a young boy to help with farm work; but due to a mix-up, they received Anne instead. Anne, a red-haired eleven year old girl, turns out to have a certain talent for getting in trouble, but at the same time she's very resourceful and loyal, and Matthew and Marilla decide to keep her. Anne finds a close friend in Diana Barry, a girl of her own age living on a neighbouring farm. In the village school she's in constant competition with a boy called Gilbert Blythe, whom she finds it hard to forgive for initially having teased her about her red hair. We follow Anne and her schoolmates and neighbours through her school years until her mid teens. Towards the end of the book, Anne and Gilbert finally decide to put old animosity aside and be friends rather than rivals.
Book 2: Anne of Avonlea (1909). Anne is now 16 years old, and from having been a pupil, she takes on the role as teacher in the same school - a challenge which is not all easy, but she also learns a lot from it. Matthew has died, and Marilla, with help from Anne, takes on two more young orphans to bring up: Davy and Dora (twins). In their spare time, Anne and Gilbert plus Diana and some other old school friends of theirs start a Village Improvement Society - an initiative met with some skepticism from other villagers at first, but they manage to achieve some good after all.
Book 3: Anne of the Island (1915). Anne leaves Avonlea to attend college; and so does Gilbert. Anne's friend Diana stays behind in Avonlea and gets married. Anne makes a couple of new friends at college, and they move into a boarding house together. She also remains friends with Gilbert; but there are also other boys in the picture. Gilbert expresses his love for Anne, but she hesitates to do the same, and prefers to just stay friends.
Book 4: Anne's House of Dreams (1917). Somewhat to my surprise*, in the next book I found Anne and Gilbert (the latter now a doctor) getting married. Gilbert is taking over a medical practice from an uncle of his, and finds them a house at the seaside nearby.
* I say "to my surprise", because I recall in the past having read a book dealing with events taking place between books 3 and 4 in this collection, with Anne teaching at some other countryside school after college. A bit of research tells me that such a book does indeed exist - entitled Anne of Windy Poplars. But that books was not written (or at least not published) until 1936. So I guess there are copyright reasons behind why that one, + another one written in 1939, were not included in this collection. (The earlier six books are now all 100 years old; but the two later ones are not...)
Anyway: In Anne's House of Dreams, Anne and Gilbert get married, move into a little house at the seaside, and are making new friends in their new neighbourhood. Anne also gives birth to their first child - a girl who sadly dies shortly after birth. This loss brings Anne close to a neighbour, Leslie, who has suffered some tragedies of her own, being trapped in a love-less marriage. As a young girl Leslie was forced to marry a cruel man, who did not treat her well. He was later lost at sea and was thought to have died - but one day came back, now brain-damaged and helpless. His temper is now meeker, but he depends on Leslie for everything - more like a child than a husband. Meanwhile, Leslie meets another man she falls in love with. But as she's already married, nothing can come of that. However, the whole story takes an unexpected turn when Gilbert examines Leslie's husband and comes up with the suggestion that he might be helped by brain surgery. And in connection with that, it turns out that nothing about this whole sub-story is quite as it has seemed to be, after all...
Anne herself has another baby, a son; and this time all goes well. At the end of the book, Anne and Gilbert decide to move to a bigger house in the same neighbourhood, with their new baby and their faithful maid/housekeeper Susan.
Book 5: Rainbow Valley (1919). Again a big time-jump from the previous book: Anne is now married to Gilbert since 15 years, and they
have six children. The focus in this book is mainly on the children; but also on a new minister moving into the village, a widower with four children. The children from both families become friends; and they also rescue an orphaned girl and find a new home for her.
Again, some further research tells me that the author later filled in the years between books 4 and 5 with one written twenty years later, in 1939: Anne of Ingleside. (I've never read that one. I might seek it out and read it later.)
Book 6: Rilla of Ingleside (1921). And once again a big leap in time for the reader: Almost a decade after the events in Rainbow Valley, this book starts on the brink of the outbreak of World War I, with the events in Europe also affecting Canada. Rilla, the youngest of Anne's and Gilbert's children (named after Marilla, who adopted Anne as a child) is now 15 years old. Her parents worry about her, as she does not seem to have any ambitions, and is not interested in attending college. When the war breaks out in Europe, many young men in Canada enlist, including Rilla's oldest brother Jem. Her other siblings return to school, but Rilla does not. She stays in the village, but becomes involved in forming a junior Red Cross organisation. In connection with this, she also happens to find a two-week-old baby whose young mother has just died, while the husband is away at war. Finding no other solution, Rilla takes the child back home with her, and ends up caring for him herself (even if with some assistance from her family). As the war continues, her brother Walter also enlists; and so does another boy for whom Rilla cares very much. Finally her youngest brother Shirley also makes the same decision, once he's old enough. Walter ends up killed in action. Jem is reported missing, but later turns out to have been taken prisoner in Germany, and eventually returns.
To me, Rilla of Ingleside was the most interesting book in the series since the original book Anne of Green Gables. It's the one that in my opinion comes closest to the spirit of the original, although it is now Anne's daughter Rilla who is in focus, and is struggling to "find her place, and herself" in the circumstances she finds herself thrown into. And another reason is the setting of this last book, as we get to follow the development of World War I from the Canadian point of view, and through the eyes of a family step by step following every piece of news made available, as they have close family members actively fighting in that war.
The Wikipedia article about this book also adds that "Rilla of Ingleside is the only Canadian novel written from a woman's perspective about the First World War by a contemporary."
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