Book Review: Anne of Green Gables

Yes. I'm still working on a long-form review of a new book that, frankly, I don't like at all; the fine art of describing the book objectively in a way that reflects an understanding that the author was writing it for people different from me, that those people will absolutely love this book but if I don't get a substantial chunk of money out of the review I'll feel that I was cheated out of the time it took to read. So meanwhile, here, free of charge, is a nice little reivew of a book of which I've sold several copies over the years, often to accompany red-haired dolls in hand-knitted dresses.

Book Review: Anne of Green Gables

Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Date: 1908, 1992

Publisher: L.C. Page (1908), Bantam (1992)

ISBN: 0-553-21313-X

Length: 308 pages

Quote: “A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished.”

Anne Shirley hardly needs an introduction. She’s a whimsical, fanciful orphan who convinces two old people (brother and sister) to adopt her, and grows up to make them glad they did. She talks too much, but apart from that she’s a lovable child.

Mark Twain called her “the sweetest creation of child life yet written.” How much does that say about her? Not much had been written strictly about child life even in Mark Twain’s time. Twain’s best known characters were young, as were Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, and the Little Women, but they did not live what could be narrowly described as child lives—their stories carried them forward into grown-up life. How Anne compares with Heidi or Sara Crewe, or whether Mark Twain was familiar with either of them, this deponent sayeth not. Anyway, readers usually enjoy Anne.

I tend to suspect that some real-life character study went into Anne. What makes her so lovable is that, although she chatters, she chatters like a desperately lonely, needy introvert. She's not trying to control the attention of the world; she's looking for someone who can appreciate her long, deep, earnest thoughts. She's like a baby writer who's never learned to type. I think that's why people who like books always like Anne, even after they grow up and do a bit of fashionable grumbling about the commemorative statue as "the Anne that Ate Prince Edward Island.".

Meaning that our objection is that the character has become too popular. The tourist industry, not Montgomery, is the proper target of indignation. Montgomery probably never imagined that larger-than-life images of her characters would appear in ads on, for, and among buildings that would not have fitted into the “beautification scheme” Anne takes up in one of the sequels..

In view of its huge popularity this book can be recommended to two types of adults: (1) Those who need more of a reminder than “flavoring cake with liniment,” “dyeing red hair green,” or “feud with the boy she grows up to marry”; and (2) those who have lost, misplaced, or worn out their copies and need a new copy to give to a middle school girl.