Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.
Title: Anne of Ingleside.
Author: L.M. Montgomery.
Genre: Fiction, YA, children's lit, family saga.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: August, 1939.
Summary: Anne is the mother of five, with never a dull moment in her lively home. And now, with a new baby on the way and insufferable Aunt Mary Maria visiting - and wearing out her welcome - Anne's life is full to bursting. Still, Mrs. Doctor can't think of a any place she'd rather be than her own beloved Ingleside, with all her children inheriting her knack for adventures and mishaps. Until the day she begins to worry that Gilbert has begun taking her for granted and doesn't love her anymore.
My rating: 8/10.
My Review:
♥ "Don't grudge Anne Cordelia her fancies, Diana. I'm always sorry for children who don't spend a few years in fairyland."
♥ They went quietly, silently, lovingly home together, with the sunset glory burning on the old hills behind them and their old unforgotten love burning in their hearts.
♥ Perhaps Aunt Kitty MacGregor of the Upper Glen, who was reported to have "the second sight," was right when, having once taken a deep look into Walter's long-lashed, smoky grey eyes, she said he "did be having an old soul in a young body." It might be that the old soul knew too much for the young brain to understand always.
♥ "Mummy," said Walter, as the door closed behind a gratified Susan, "I think we are a very nice family, don't you?"
A very nice family, Anne reflected happily as the lay in her bed, with the baby beside her. Soon she would be about with them again, light-footed as of yore, loving them, teaching them, comforting them. They would be coming to her with their little joys and sorrows, their budding hopes, their new fears, their little problems that seemed so big to them and their little heart-breaks that seemed so bitter. She would hold all the threads of the Ingleside life in her hands again to weave into a tapestry of beauty.
♥ "It isn't dark... it's twilight... there has been a love-match between light and dark and beautiful exceedingly is the offspring thereof," said Anne more to herself than anybody else.
♥ Anne always liked to get up early and catch that mystical half-hour before sunrise when the world belongs to the fairies and the old gods.
♥ Jem, who had set his heart on Bruno and was slowly but all too surely learning a bitter lesson... that you can buy a dog's body bit you cannot buy his love.
♥ "Dad, how did Adam know that a dog was a dog?"
"Because a god couldn't be anything but a dog," grinned Dad. "Could he now?"
♥ Anne was allowed to sit up in bed. She was nearly well again after being ill. She would soon be able to keep her house again... read her books... lie easily on her pillows... eat everything she wanted... sit by her fireplace... look to her garden... see her friends... listen to juicy bits of gossip... welcome the days shining like jewels on the necklace of the year... be again a part of the colourful pageantry of life.
♥ "And it's nice to be making the garden beautiful," said Jem. "Susan says it is God who makes everything beautiful but we can help Him out a bit, can't we, Mums?"
"Always... always, Jem. He shares that privilege with us."
♥ "He may come back to us in the spring, darling," Anne said to the sobbing Rilla. But Rilla was not to be comforted.
"That ith too far away," she sobbed.
Anne smiled and sighed. The seasons that seemed so long to Baby Rilla were beginning to pass all too quickly for her. Another summer was ended, lighted out of life by the ageless gold of Lombardy torches. Soon... all too soon... the children of Ingleside would be children no longer. But they were still hers... hers to welcome when they came home at night... hers to full life with wonder and delight... hers to love and cheer and scold... a little.
♥ Mothers were the same all through the centuries... a great sisterhood of love and service... the remembered and the unremembered alike.
♥ "Life and death are in the power of the tongue," murmured Anne absently.
♥ "Not even a husband's funeral could damp Clarice down long," said Agatha Drew. "There was nothing solid about her. Always dancing and singing."
"I used to dance and sing... on the shore, where nobody heard me," said Myra Murray.
"Ah, but you've grown wiser since then," said Agatha.
"No-o-o, foolisher," said Myra Murray slowly. "Too foolish now to dance along the shore."
♥ Well, that was life. Gladness and pain... hope and fear... and change. Always change! You could not help it. You had to let the old go and take the new to your heart... learn to love it and then let it go in turn. Spring, lovely as it was, must yield to summer and summer lose itself in autumn. The birth... the bridal... the death...
♥ "Time is kinder than we think," thought Anne. "It's a dreadful mistake to cherish bitterness for years... hugging it to our hearts like a treasure."
♥ It is no use asking how dreams grow.
♥ Of course it sounds very foolish. Dreams do sound so foolish when they are put into cold brutal words. Ten-year-old Nan never put hers into words... she only lived them.
♥ Just a few steps more... the GLOOMY HOUSE was before her, amid and behind those dark dripping trees. She was going to see it at last! She shivered a little... and did not know that it was because of a secret unadmitted fear of losing her dream. Which is always, for youth or maturity or age, a catastrophe.
♥ "Delilah says if she had a million dollars she'd give it all to me, Susan. Of course I wouldn't take it but it shows how good her heart is."
"It is as easy to give away a million as a hundred if you have not got either," was as far as Susan would go.
♥ Well, perhaps all men were like that. Probably Miss Cornelia would say that they were. After a time they were hard to hold. ("If my husband has to be 'held' I don't want to hold him.")
♥ After all, the modern fashions of men's clothes were really ridiculous. Entirely lacking in glamour. How gorgeous it must have been in "the spacious days of Great Elizabeth" when men could wear white satin doublets and cloaks of crimson velvet and lace ruffs! They they were not effeminate. They were the most wonderful ad adventurous men the world had ever seen.
♥ The diamond pendant slipped to the floor, unheeded for the moment. It was beautiful... but there were so many things lovelier... confidence and peace and delightful work... laughter and kindness... that old safe feeling of a sure love.
♥ "...she's the same age as you but she looks ten years older."
"And you talking to her about immortal youth!"
Gilbert grinned guiltily.
"One has to say something civil. Civilization can't exist without a little hypocrisy."