Discussion Post: The Blythes Are Quoted

[myr_soleil]

Hi everyone! Welcome to our final discussion of the Anne series, on The Blythes Are Quoted. I know some of you didn't manage to get your hands on it, so I tried to make some questions more about the short stories that you can also find in The Road To Yesterday, although I don't know if they have as much Blythes references as the ones in The Blythes

Comments

[myr_soleil]

5. Are you happy to get more info on what happened to our Blythes? Jem and Walter Jr, Gilbert Ford, Di Meredith, Di's mysterious beau... Did you want more?
I am! And I did want more! The names were a bit confusing, but I'm pretty sure Jem Jr and Walter Jr were Jem's kids, and Gilbert was obviously Rilla's, and I thought it was a nice touch that Nan would give her sister's name to her daughter. It is weird that none of the names seemed to be new, though. ;) And I wanted to know what was up with Di's love story! People mentioned it once or twice and it seemed to be interesting, but we had no more details than that...

6. Did you like the format in The Blythes Are Quoted? What did you think of the poems and the vignettes?
I didn't care much for the poems. I'm not a big poetry fan in the first place and those weren't my style at all. The vignettes were uneven - it felt like they were not really themselves, and the dialogue felt forced. The thing with A Voice no one hears: You will. And his name will be death. was so weird I burst out laughing! But I loved how we saw Gilbert still so obviously in love with Anne.

7. I won't ask questions about each short story, because that would take ages, but - favorite story? Least favorite? Isn't Some Fools And A Saint super creepy? Any thoughts on how LMM sort of twisted her favorite theme of families reuniting in An Afternoon With Mr. Jenkins, though she played it more straight up in a few other stories? Did you notice any other recurring themes from the series? Why does everybody talk about Susan Baker?
Aaack, Some Fools and a Saint creeps me out so much. Such hatred! Brrr. I didn't like the plot of Brother Beware (wtf, kidnapping someone, and the someone being more than willing to go ahead with it?!) and had so much trouble understanding the last part of Here Comes The Bride that it made me not like the story, heh. A Dream Comes True was hilarious, and I liked Penelope and her theories, too (although the "you need a man!" part was unnecessary, but well, they can't all be Miss Cordelia). I liked most of the stories well enough. A Commonplace Woman was certainly unexpected.

[katayla]

I did feel a bit like it was a marketing scam, like I said at first, and the reworking of the stories to include them was too obvious)

Haha, especially since I noticed sometimes they were REALLY repetitive, like I think one character noticed how much someone's eyes looked like Anne's twice within a few paragraphs!

I wanted to hear more about Di's love story, too! Though I was happy to hear she had one!

The thing with A Voice no one hears: You will. And his name will be death. was so weird I burst out laughing!

LOL YES. I didn't think it even really made sense?

[h_loquacious]

The thing with A Voice no one hears: You will. And his name will be death. was so weird I burst out laughing!

I didn't laugh, but I was knocked right out of the story. It was a bit weird to say the least. Even stranger than Dog Monday's random comments in Rilla, etc.

For some reason I like Brother Beware. I suspect it has something to do with the woman's completely blase attitude towards the kidnapping. Like it's no big deal. Because yeah, that story probably should irritate me more than it should).

[myr_soleil]

It's certainly startling. It was more of a weirded-out laugh because it was just too much! I don't mind Dog Monday's comments, I feel like they humanize him so much that they don't bother me.

Yeah, I guess in the end she's shown to be more clever than him, but. I don't know, it just seemed to send a dangerous message! Plus it annoyed me that she decided to come in the house where she was supposed to be locked-in and just cooked and cleaned, very Snow White-like, haha. Obviously these are "modern" objections that probably didn't even cross LMM's mind at the time... IDK.

[h_loquacious]

Okay, yes, that's true. I was making some allowances for time period. I was also entertained because he clearly thought she'd freak out and she just took it all ridiculously calmly. But had anyone but LMM tried to write it, I probably would have been annoyed.