Anne of Ingleside (1939)

I don't like Anne growing up very much, as I think I've said. This book still has glimpses of the old Anne, and her children are sweet to read about. The last part of the book brings a touch more realism to it.

But I still miss young Anne-spelled-with-an-e Shirley. ( )

This is where the series kinda starts to go downhill for me. ( )

So this one is not my favorite. It has these wild mood swings from creepy domestic abuse survivors showing up at funerals to mawkishly cutesy lisping children getting into "adorable" scrapes. There is essentially no plot, just a bunch of random anecdotes.
I did like the story of Peter Kirk's funeral though, and SUSAN BAKER REBECCA DEW = BFFS 4 ALWAYS ( )

This book was good and not so good at the same time. I really loved-all the adventures of her children, especially Nan and Walter who had the kind of imagination that Anne did. I did not care for when the adults talked and it was full of gossip and so many characters I couldn't keep track. ( )

Anne of Ingleside is the least enjoyable entry I've read to date in the Anne Shirley stories. It is a fun story, do not get me wrong, but there is so much to dislike about it, that I couldn't find myself able to want to ever read it again, and that is a first for me with the series. I may not have been thrilled with the previous chronological work, Anne's House of Dreams, but I can see myself rereading it. Not so here.

The book covers several years in the life of the Blythe family. It begins a few years after the end of the previous book, and continues for about seven to eight years of time. It's sort of like a retread of Anne's own formative years in Anne of Green Gables, but with many children instead of one. There are, to be sure, a couple of differences between the narrative here and in the original book, and it is those very differences that make this volume far inferior to the other books in the series.

To start with, Anne and her husband Gilbert are just too dang perfect as parents and people. Diana and other friends of Anne and Gilbert seem to have normal issues with aging, but not them. They stay handsome and beautiful. No weight issues, or overly-graying hair, or what not. They remain perfect specimens. Essentially, they are Canon Sues. Everyone in the town they live in love them. Gilbert is admired, and every man in town of adult age seems to harbor a tiny crush on Anne. The characterization is not at all like that of Marilla, Matthew or Rachel Lynde, who were older, overweight, thought to be too stern, a jabber-jaw, and so forth.

Which is another point of their unrealistic perfection. They are not just good parents, they seem to be Montgomery's vision of the ideal parents. No giving in too much like Matthew, or being unable to admit emotions and the resulting too strict attitude for many years until they got over it like with Marilla, or a nosiness and love of their own voice like Rachel Lynde. Not even weight problems or bitterness like contemporaries, such as Anne's childhood chum, Diana, or old acquaintance Christine Stuart, respectively. There is no real drama, because they are the perfect people come to entertain us.

Even at the end, when it starts to get interesting, the “conflict” is short-lived. After this “conflict” Anne and Gilbert revel in their happiness and each other's physical beauty, while at the same times mocking the bitterness, sad life, and physical defects (such as being “fat”) of a woman who was quite rude to Anne. Indeed, obviously the woman's obnoxious behavior makes her quite unsympathetic, but it just irked me. The one area where Anne and Gilbert exhibit a lasting fault is in a sick type of schadenfreude towards this cruel woman. It would have been better had they not realized that the woman is jealous and has a pathetic life, but they do realize it, and they make fun of it.

I am going to not be quite as harsh towards this as I could be, as I realize that I am a tad too sensitive to weight issues due to my own struggles. So I may be being perhaps a tad oversensitive. Really this still disturbed me, but it wasn't as horrible as all that. I still think that many of the faults they had in earlier books would have been better explored than this one.

The other area I hated was the foreshadowing. Read the ending, and try to tell me you can't figure out the spoiler for one of her children in a future book. Just try it. Assuming you know even a scintilla of history, you'll guess. I like to avoid reminders of that future storyline, perhaps because it reminds me of my own issues, and perhaps because I want to enjoy the stories to date without being sad. That was impossible here, as Montgomery chose a type of “foreshadowing” that amounts to smacking the reader across the face with a proverbial 2 x 4.

Was the book all bad? No. Not by a long shot. It was fun to read the adventures of the adorable wee ones, and see the world through their eyes. While they were a tad bit too on the perfect side themselves, it was a pleasure to read the world through their eyes. Montgomery possessed, among her many talents, a wonderful ability to write from the mindset of a child. Of special note to me are Walter, given his eventual story arc, and Rilla, who is so adorable. Walter is an admirable, and tragic heroic figure, and little Rilla is so cute thinking how she talks. Her thoughts have a lisp sometimes. It's so sweet. :)

Also of note was the humor of the housekeeper, Susan Baker. Her spunk and attitude is really funny. She is the blunt, sarcastic (but not really in a mean way) character that says what the audience would like to say. Basically, she fits the literary concept of the audience surrogate in the story. It's a good thing that she had so much of a presence in the story, as it's her point of view, as well as those just referenced of the children, that are the saving graces, such as it were, of the novel.

I'm honestly flummoxed as to what to think of this book. With more time, perhaps it will grow on me. The weakest of the series so far, but by no means terrible. ( )