Anne of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery

Seven years has passed since the end of Anne's House of Dreams. Anne Blythe, née Shirley, is about thirty four years old, mother to five children: Jem, Walter, twins Nan and Di, and Shirley, with a sixth on the way. (Rilla.) Anne of Ingleside chronicles the adventures of the whole Blythe family across a span of six years.

Despite its title, this isn't really Anne's story any more. After a lovely nostalgic few chapters on vacation in Avonlea, where she revisits her old haunts and relives old memories with her best friend Diana, Anne fades somewhat into the background, where she is more "Mrs Doctor, dear," wise and respected wife and mother, than the impetuous girl of old.

Anne of Ingleside is the most anecdotal book of the whole series, with chapters focusing in on one family member at a time. There are enough children to ensure that there is only room for one case of matchmaking, one cantankerous, pessimistic old lady and one stream of gossip about people we don't know, but it also means that I don't really get to know any of the younger Blythes as people, except perhaps Walter. Shirley, the youngest son, doesn't get any attention at all.

I wrote in my review of Anne's House of Dreams that it ended on a melancholy note. Although the stories told in Ingleside are entertaining enough, I sense a bitter undercurrent to many of the stories. When the narrative returns to Anne's perspective in the end of the novel, she doesn't seem like the same person at all, consumed with jealousy of Gilbert's old flame, the spiteful Christine. She fears that Gilbert has fallen out of love with her and become complacent, their marriage a comfortable old habit after fifteen years.

Although Anne and Gilbert's love story has a happy ending, this is not the only troubling moment of Ingleside. In the aforementioned gossip chapter, allusions are made to a really nasty incident at the funeral of an unpleasant man. Di Blythe, aged ten, after two ill-judged friendships, vows not to trust anyone any more, because they'll only let her down. Then, finally, a throwaway line not only foreshadows a future tragedy, but tells it outright. If House of Dreams ended wistfully, Ingleside leaves me feeling like I've been kicked in the stomach. Just a  sentence or two from an omniscient narrator, in the middle of a tender scene of Anne looking in on her sleeping children, then the last page is a stunned blur.

Don't get me wrong, Anne of Ingleside is an enjoyable read, but the magic of the earlier books is missing. Reading Ingleside I could sense Montgomery's darker state of mind at the time of writing, and her weariness with the Anne series.

Anne's House of Dreams

After three years of waiting, Anne finally fulfils all her friends's prophecies and marries Gilbert Blythe. Gilbert is now qualified as a doctor and has taken a position sixty miles from their home town of Avonlea. The newlyweds move to a tiny village called Glen St Mary which overlooks the Four Winds Harbour, and set up their "house of dreams" in a tiny cottage with a beautiful seaview. If you think of the Anne series primarily as a romance, it makes a nice change to see the couple after the wedding, and the ups and downs of "happily ever after."

Anne's House of Dreams comes as a welcome return to the cosy, familiar Anneishness that makes the series more than just a friend but a "kindred spirit." We don't get to see much of our old friends - Marilla, Rachel Lynde and Diana - but when we do they are just as alive as ever. In Windy Willows, I realised retrospectively that the Avonlea scenes weren't quite alive, the characters described as from a distance but not captured upon the page. Though three years have passed, it picks up where Island left off, and I think it wouldn't do any harm to skip Windy Willows altogether.

It could have been all to easy to find Anne's new home to be a poor imitation of the old one, but Glen St Mary and Four Winds have their own, very distinct, feel. In Avonlea, "although [Anne] had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her constsantly." With Montgomery's word-perfect descriptions, I could almost hear the crash of the waves in the background, smell the salt in the air and feel the coolness of a sea breeze. Four Winds Harbour is a busy port, with fishermen constantly coming and going, guarded over by the lighthouse and its faithful keeper, Captain Jim Boyd. I loved Captain Jim immediately, an old sailor, rough in appearance and speech, but a true gentleman, a captivating storyteller and a hero.

Anne's House of Dreams is situated rather out of the way, just outside the village itself, and as such there are not too many new characters, meaning that each one is properly fleshed out, and that there is more of a continuous plot in this book than in its predecessors. Beside Captain Jim, we meet the stubborn and outspoken Marshall Elliot and Miss Cornelia  Bryant. If you're a Methodist or worse, a man, don't expect Miss Cornelia to have a good word for you. From tactlessness to tantrums to dying at an inopportune moment, Miss Cornelia's catchphrase is, "isn't that like a man?"

And then there is Leslie Moore. Leslie forms a strange, hostile friendship with Anne, but although Anne knows they could be "kindred spirits," there is a barrier between them. Leslie's life is like the photo-negative of Anne's, for while Anne is perfectly happy (even with her red hair) with a wonderful husband and joyful life, Leslie has experienced tragedy after tragedy, ending up trapped in a loveless marriage. The barrier between the women comes down later, but at such a cost!

Although marketed as children's books, it is clear that this is no longer a kids' series. Anne's House of Dreams is full of adult themes - unhappy marriage and the moral dilemma of whether a doctor's duty is worth heaping more suffering onto a life already full of pain. And Anne and Gilbert suffer such a heartbreak that changes their lives forever. Afterwards, "there was something in the smile that had never been in Anne's smile before and would never be absent from it again." This marks a turning-point in the tone of the series. Sorrow has touched upon a care-free, happy-go-lucky world. There can be no going back from that. The end of the book depicts Anne and Gilbert leaving their House of Dreams for a bigger house, better for raising a family in, but it happens so suddenly, in the space of a few pages, that neither the reader nor Anne is quite resigned to it. Although Anne will grow to love her new home, at the time of leaving the House of Dreams, and this volume, she hasn't yet done so, and I found it quite a melancholy note to end on.