Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery.
Title: Anne of the Island.
Author: L.M. Montgomery.
Genre: Fiction, YA, children's lit, teen lit.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1915.
Summary: New adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College. With old friend Prissy Grant waiting in the bustling city of Kingsport and frivolous new pal Philippa Gordon at her side, Anne tucks her memories of rural Avonlea away and discovers life on her own terms, filled with surprises... including a marriage proposal from the worst fellow imaginable, the sale of her very first story, and a tragedy that teaches her a painful lesson. But tears turn to laughter when Anne and her friends move into an old cottage and an ornery black cat steals her heart. Little does Anne know that handsome Gilbert Blythe wants to win her heart, too. Suddenly Anne must decide if she's ready for love...
My rating: 8/10
My Review:
♥ “‘So passes the glory of this world,’” concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.
♥ In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faёry lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
♥ “I suppose the trouble is we can’t forgive big Redmond for not being little Queen’s,” said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. “When we left Queene’s we knew everybody and had a place of our own. I suppose we have been unconsciously expecting to take life up at Redmond just where we left off at Queen’s, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from under our feet. I’m thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.”
♥ “A very good epitaph,” commented Anne thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t wish a better. We are all servants of some sort, and if the fact that we are faithful can be truthfully inscribed on our tombstones nothing more need be added.”
♥ “I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne,” said Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.
♥ “Now, if you’d come with me you’d have a perfectly gorgeous time. Bolingbroke would go wild over you, Queen Anne - your hair and your style and, oh, everything! You’re so different. You’d be such a success - and I would bask in reflected glory - ‘not the rose but near the rose.’ Do come, after all, Anne.”
“Your picture of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but I’ll paint one to offset it. I’m going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I’ve heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a ‘holy terror.’ There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my picture, Phil?”
“It seems a very dull one,” said Phil, with a grimace.
“Oh, but I’ve left out the transforming thing,” said Anne softly. “There’ll be love there, Phil - faithful, tender love, such as I’ll never find anywhere else in the world - love that’s waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn’t it, even if the colors are not very brilliant?”
♥ The love that Anne had told Phil was waiting for her surrounded her and enfolded her with its blessing and its sweetness. Nothing after all, could compare with old ties, old friends, and old Green Gables!
♥ “I wouldn’t give up altogether,” said Mr. Harrison reflectively. “I’d write a story once in a while, but I wouldn’t pester editors with it. I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne - give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you’d have to go a long piece to find them - though Mrs. Lynde believes we’re all bad. But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.”
♥ “Isn’t it strange how people misunderstand each other, Anne?”
“Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,” said Anne.
♥ “Mrs. Lynde was awful mad the other day because I asked her if she was alive in Noah’s time. I dident mean to hurt her feeling. I just wanted to know. Was she, Anne?”
♥ “I do hope so, because I love her. But I can’t understand her - she beats me. She isn’t like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself.”
“How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?”
“About half a dozen, my dear.”
♥ “You never take anything seriously, Phil.”
“Why should I? There are enough folks who do. The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would be a terrible place if everybody were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest. My mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm and allure.’”
♥ “The year is a book, isn’t it, Marilla? Spring’s pages are written in Mayflowers and violets, summer’s in roses, autumn’s in red maple leaves, and winter in holly and evergreen.”
♥ “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.”
♥ “She is a sweet old thing; but she never says anything but good of anybody and so shen is a very uninteresting conversationalist.”
♥ “Only old people should have rheumatism, Aunty.”
“Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It’s only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thank goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick our your coffin.
♥ Anne looked at Diana’s light and thought how it had beaconed to her for many years; but soon it would shine through the summer twilights no more. Two big, painful tears welled up in her gray eyes.
“Oh,” she thought, “how horrible it is that people have to grow up - and marry - and change!”
♥ “Examinating? I’ve never heard such a word.”
“Well, haven’t I as good a right to make a word as any one else?” demanded Phil.
“Words aren’t made - they grow,” said Anne.
♥ “What have you got out of your Redmond course, Anne?” murmured Priscilla aside.
“I think,” said Anne slowly, “that I really have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as the foreshadowing of victory.”
♥ She was deeply in love with Roy. True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be. But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one’s imagination of it? It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated - the same disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the chill sparkle instead of the purple splendor she had anticipated. “That’s not my idea of a diamond,” she had said.
♥ “I do know my own mind,” protested Anne. “The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.”
♥ “It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.”