Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, Jane Brocket

I certainly didn't think, when I started this blog, I would be writing about a cookery book, but that was before I found Jane Brocket's collection of treasures: Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. The premise of this book is to recreate the sort of food that was eaten in the golden age of children's literature. I discovered it on the shelf at work, and its very title evoked a Famous Five adventure, with "lashings of ginger beer" (a phrase that is not actually known to appear in any of Enid Blyton's novels, but describes them perfectly.) I looked at this book, and thought, "Surely not? Surely it's just the children's literature obessive in me that makes me think it could be a book about Enid Blyton's love of describing food?" It had a lovely, old-fashioned cover, and looking closely at the illustration I thought it looked suspiciously like Milly-Molly-Mandy. Looking inside, I realised this wasn't just about Enid Blyton, but food in children's literature down the ages. Of course, the first thing I looked for was to see whether there were any recipes from Anne of Green Gables, in particular, for Raspberry Cordial. There it was: "Marilla Cuthbert's Zero-Alcohol Raspberry Cordial." Along the way, I saw recipes also from Swallows and Amazons and, of course, Enid Blyton.

At that point, I realised I was not being paid to stand around reading books all day, so put it back, but my appetite was whetted. I wanted that book so badly! It looked to me as though Ms Brocket had reached into my childhood and made an edible version of it - for the books I mention here were more than just stories I read and forgot. Sometimes, looking back, I have such nostalgia for them that it takes a bit of effort to separate what I did as a child, and what I read about. Out of curiosity, I made a list of the ten most influential childhood books and series, and checked Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer to see how many featured. I expected several. I did not expect them all. But not one of my top ten was excluded. Not one! "This," I thought to myself, "Is a woman who's read all the right books."

Anne of Green Gables, as I may have mentioned before, was the series that was most influential. I found in Anne a "kindred spirit," one who was like me in ways no one in the real world was. She was a dreamer, constantly making believe and telling stories in her mind, if not to others. I have already made the Anne recipes from Cherry Cake... two items of food and drink that involve similar mistakes on the behalf of Anne: the raspberry cordial that Anne meant to give Diana when she came to tea, and the layer cake that was unfortunately flavoured with anodyne liniment. I replaced the liniment with vanilla flavouring, however, not being quite sure what anodyne liniment was when it was at home. Googling the word implies that it is some kind of antiseptic or painkilling medicine - tasty(!) I was very happy with how that turned out. Ms Brocket's recipe was unashamedly going for recreating the childhood fancy of a "layer cake" rather than realism, which was probably nothing grander than a Victoria sandwich. The recipe here was for some kind of strawberries and cream gateau, and allowed one to double the proportions for four layers. Because we had slightly smaller tins than the recipe suggested, I made a three-layer cake, sandwiched together with strawberries and cream. I also used plain flour with baking-powder, rather than self-raising, because in Anne, the heroine at first blames the baking-powder for the disaster, to which Marilla returns, "Baking-powder, fiddlesticks!" I cannot think of the word "Baking-powder" without the word "fiddlesticks" on the end. I have to say, it was the best sponge cake I'd ever made, and it did indeed come out of the oven "as light and feathery as golden foam," thanks to mum's gluten-free flour.

Have also made raspberry cordial, a drink so sweet and indulgent that you (at least, I) wonder that it features - I tend to think of Marilla as keeping a kitchen full of plain, simple, wholesome food, whereas Raspberry Cordial (not to be mistaken for currant wine) is simply delicious! I unfortunately dropped about a quarter of the jug over the kitchen floor, and it looked rather as though I'd committed a murder.

This afternoon, I had a Swallows and Amazons themed baking session. This is the ideal holiday adventure series - not as outlandish as Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, but escapism nonetheless. The series captures a less paranoid time when children would be allowed to go sailing and camping without adult supervision, with a father who reasons that his children are "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers, won't drown." It too is a wonderful world of make-believe, with the town (I visited there when I was younger, but I can't remember what it was called,) renamed Rio, and the Old Man of Coniston (that I do remember) christened Kanchenjunga. The series is well-written because it doesn't talk down to the children, but reports the stories with the same juxtaposition of reality and fantasy as they would use, not having to explain what is "real" and what is make-believe, because we just know. The Swallows and the Amazons (and later the D's) also enjoy lashings of ginger beer, but they call it grog.

I made "Bunloaf," a nice, thick, rich fruit cake, and "Seedcake," which is a funny, old-fashioned recipe, a sponge cake with caraway seeds which I'd never used before but which have a peculiar flavour. Tasty, but a bit dry, so best eaten with plenty of grog to wash it down. Seedcake is a thing I associate with the Secret Seven as well, though I don't know whether it ever made an appearance in the Seven's clubroom. But I have clear memories of play-acting Secret Seven, and even that it was George who brought it as a meeting snack. That was before I was conscious that seed-cake really existed. It just sounded like something the Seven would eat.

The very first recipe I tried out, even before the liniment layer cake, was Debby's Jumbles from What Katy Did at School. They appear in perhaps the most evocative description of luscious food in children's literature; a chapter called "Christmas Boxes." The girls, Katy and Clover, stay at their boarding school over Christmas, but are not forgotten by their family, who send them enough cakes, fruit and sweets to feed them and all their friends. One of these cakes, which I had always wondered about, was the jumble, which was descibed as a round, crumbly cake. I had always thought of them as rather like doughnuts, but they turned out to be half-biscuitty, half-cakey, and could be flavoured with any number of things. This time I made them with lemon zest, but I wonder what they would be like with cinnamon. Hmm... perhaps next time...

In case you were wondering, the ten series to which I was referring were:

Anne of Green Gables,

What Katy Did

Little House on the Prairie (I am yet to make any of these recipes. Am tempted by cornbread but have not yet located cornmeal in Isle of Wight shops.)

Swallows and Amazons

The Chronicles of Narnia (somehow, I never really thought of these in the same category of "food" novels, probably because there was so much else going on. Sardines on toast, though, will always be associated with Mr Tumnus.)

Milly-Molly-Mandy

The Chalet School (When I went to stay with my Aunt in Germany a few years back, I was pleased to discover that kaffee und kuchen really does seem to exist as a meal - so much more honest than English afternoon tea - you skip the bread and butter and go straight onto the cake.)

The Famous Five

The Secret Seven

Malory Towers

These are the books that, one way or another, I seemed to live more than just read, whether it was by writing fill-in fan-fiction in my little blue folder (none of those stories ever got further than a page or two, but the intent was there) or played make-believe (on my own, generally. My school friends, at eight, were far too sophisticated to act out these books when I wanted to, so I had to play all seven members of the Secret Seven. Or I just read them over and over until I knew them backwards, and fictional incidents seem clearer than my own memories. And for me to find a book that has found all of these and extracted the edible parts of them - why, it's almost too good to be true. It's strange to think that anyone else could have written a cookbook that was so completely and entirely targetted at me.

Twilight and New Moon, Stephenie Meyer

This time a break from L. M. Montgomery, although there is still a link as on Meyer's official website she gives a list of recommended reading, which includes the complete Anne of Green Gables series.

I first encountered Twilight a couple of years ago and was drawn to it by its cover, by which a book should never be, but frequently is, judged. Frequently I picked it up, as its black and red and white appealed to my darker side, and read the blurb on the back:

About three things I was absolutely positive :
First, Edward was a vampire.
Second, there was a part of him-and I didn't know how dominant that part may be-that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

"Puh-lease!" I thought, and put the book back again. I had this strange sense of deja vu. Once, years ago, I read a book about a girl meeting a vampire after moving to a new place - possibly living or working in a hotel, but I can't be sure of that. I think, but couldn't swear to it, that she was drawn to him, dangerously - I wouldn't say falls in love. I don't think I ever finished tht book, and there are few books about which I can say that. I just remember an image from my head of standing by a lake or a pond and all is dark blue. At twilight, it must be. I don't remember what that book was called, but I was very unimpressed by it. I was convinced, at first, that Twilight was that book, rereleased with a shiny new cover. But when I checked its publication date, it was too recent.

Several times I looked at the back of the book, but never got further than that. A sequel, two, three made their way onto the shelves, and I started to become aware, as I worked in a bookshop, that the books were very popular. Reading on the internet I discovered a little more. Edward, for example, was what Terry Pratchett would call "A black ribboner" - a vampire who has sworn off human blood. But Pratchett's characters work as his is a comic universe. In general, I felt that a vampire who didn't drink blood wasn't a vampire at all. After all - girls fantasise about vampires. At least two of my best friends have crushes on Lestat from Interview With the Vampire. But their attraction is their danger, surely. A vampire romance - with a vampire who didn't drink human blood - just sounded particularly insipid. Like fantasy fulfilment that backfires.

General consensus seemed to be that Twilight was bad, but enjoyable, a guilty pleasure, (apart from those teenage girls who were determined that it was the "best b00k evaah n edward is soooo h0ttt!!111") Despite myself, I found myself wanting to read it just to see what all the fuss was about... except that being in four books, one being rather a monster volume, I wasn't sure I could put myself through it. Rather like High School Musical, but with more fangs and less singing. Plus, the titles of the second and third books: New Moon and Eclipse made me think of a certain Jaffa Cakes advert that used to be on the TV.

In the end it was the film that decided me. I haven't been to the cinema in months and I was getting withdrawal symptoms, but there was absolutely nothing on that I wanted to see. So when I heard Twilight would be out soon I decided that it was the least of many evils when pitted against James Bond, unfunny comedies and unromantic romances. Still, that left me with a dilemma. I am, primarily, a book-lover. Films come secondary. I rarely watch a film that wasn't at one point based on a book, and I don't like to see adaptations before I have read the original. But could I do that to myself?

I could, and I did. I even read the second and am about to start the third.

The story goes that Isabella Swan, henceforth known as Bella, moves to the small, wet town (sounds like it's been lifted from England, or at least the weather has been) of Forks, WA. She starts high school and meets Edward Cullen, who is a vampire. They fall in love at first sight, as you do, though Edward's idea of love at first sight is like me falling in love with a box of Lindt Lindor at first sight. It takes all his effort not to swoop on her, and subsequently he acts as though he hates her.

Now, there's no mystery about Edward. He's a vampire, that is obvious to anyone who's read the blurb on the back, or seen the trailer for the film. It is Bella who is the enigma. I read her as rather an unreliable narrator. She tells us that she is plain, gawky and a misfit, but she has every boy she meets falling at her feet. Even Edward, though he tries to hide it. Also, in the very first book she shows traits of resembling a vampire. She is pale skinned. She is incredibly sensitive to the smell of blood. There is something about her that stops Edward, who has the ability to read minds, from reading hers. And, as before mentioned, he falls head over heels for her on first sight.

At the end of the first book, she is bitten by a vampire, but Edward saves her from turning into one. Or so it appears. In the second, Bella is often described as feeling very cold when no one else is. Now, later in the series, I will probably find that Mrs Meyer attributes this to the vampire bite, perhaps say that it had a slower effect on her but that at that moment she began to turn. However, the signs were there very early on. There is something that Bella is not telling us.

The love story, I'm sorry, does not convince me. It reads more like infatuation to me. Bella's attracted to Edward - we are told over and over that he is more beautiful than is humanly possible, like a Greek god, with perfect features and marble skin. I'm not sure that the "marble skin" image is as attractive as it is supposed to be. Not on a man. It makes me think of Othello's description of Desdemona:

"Yet I’ll not shed her blood

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow

And smooth as monumental alabaster."

Now, I've read that Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward in the film, is getting absolutely mobbed and rather scared by all the teenage fangirls who have fallen in love with Edward. Or rather, infatuation. I suppose it's the tortured hero idea, but to me he is irritable, temperamental and changeable. "Ah," you might say, "That is because he loves Bella and wants what is best for her, but wants to be with her, and the two needs are not compatable." That's true, that's accurate... but... there is something flat about their relationship. Trying to pinpoint what it is that doesn't quite work, but when I think I've got it I remember something that contradicts it. I think, what it is, is that Bella seems infatuated with how Edward looks and the exoticism of him being a vampire, but I don't see much of what makes her love him. She is obsessed with him, certainly, to an unhealthy degree, to the point of abandoning interest in everything else.

Even more unhealthily, Bella demands again and again that she wants to be a vampire too, and Edward refuses, again and again, to bite her. Bella shows a shockingly selfish disregard for her humanity, ignores Edward's telling her that immortality is not all fun and games. She seems like she's got this pretty, daydreaming, unrealistic idea that she clings to about being a vampire, without giving any thought to the torture the Cullens (especially Edward) suffer as a result of their lifestyle. She also pays no thought to how her parents will react. In short, she is a heedless teenager who lives in a world of her own. The sad thing is, I'm sure she will get her wish before the end of the series. I wonder whether she will live to regret it. I think of that awful journalist at the end of Interview who after Louis has told this story about how terrible it is to be a vampire, thinks, "Oh, go on, it can't be that bad, make me a vampire and I'll do a better job of it than you did." To which Louis thinks, "Have you not listened to a word I said?" Bella, too, thinks she knows better than those who know what they're talking about because they've lived the undead "life."

Bella and Edward's relationship all happens so quickly I don't quite believe it. And he seems to love her as though she were a box of Lindt Lindor that he knows he mustn't eat. It seems to be her blood he loves more than anything else, but he resists going in for the swoop. At the same time, though he's always saying he's dangerous, I'm not sure I quite believe it. There are moments when you see it, but usually not.

In the sequel, New Moon, Bella gives herself a paper-cut in the presence of Edward and his family, after which Edward jumps at her to protect her from his brother Jasper, who struggles with the black ribboners' non-human diet. That causes her to injure herself more seriously by, if I got this right, falling onto a load of glass at the dinner table. Edward and the Cullens leave Forks to protect Bella, which causes her to sink into a more severe case of moping than I gave a main character after killing off her fiancé - and I thought I was overdoing it.

After this, the Cullens also disappear from the story for about, oh, the middle third or half of the book, and at this point, despite Bella's moping, the story becomes more interesting (ie there is more story and less description of Edward's marble statue beauty. Bella spends a lot of time with her friend Jacob, and this relationship with the blurred edges of whether they should count count themselves boyfriend and girlfriend or just friends is one of the more realistic relationships in the book. Jacob, too, is a more rounded character than Edward.

Not that this section of the book will escape analysis or criticism. Jacob becomes worried about his friends, who seem to be falling under the spell of one Sam Uley, looking as though they are being drawn into a cult and acting strangely. Then Jacob is next. Bella is exceedingly thick at this point. For someone who dated a vampire for six months or so, she takes a long time to realise that Jacob is a werewolf, even though, at the same time he told her the old Quileute legends about vampires which led her to realise the truth about Edward, he told her that he was supposedly descended from werewolves.

Second issue - this being a writing criticism - when it finally does click with Bella, it is in a dream where she sees him turning into a wolf. This is a weak narrative device - though one I have been guilty of myself as a teenager. It must be another clue to Bella being an undiagnosed vampire, as the vampires all have supernatural skills. Edward's sister Alice can see the future. Perhaps Bella too has this ability.

Criticism 3: Werewolves vs. vampires. Either/or, please. Both in a fantasy set in the real world is too much - too many mythical creatures running around. And the two species being at war makes me think "Underworld" and Montagues and Capulets. (Having said that, there are a lot of Romeo and Juliet references in this book.)

The last part of the book shows Bella jetting off to Italy, as you do, to stop Edward committing suicide by angering the Volturi, or Vampire royal family, into killing him (as suicide for the undead is a bit difficult.) For a while it stops being fantasy in high school and changes genre to epic fantasy. I think, overall, I prefer the local, small-town stories. I think I always do. I'm rather a home-girl at heart, and when reading - or writing - a book, I like it to be set mostly near to home. When you change settings you change the tone of the book, and despite the corniness of the Twilight books, I do have to admit to enjoying the local, high-school, small-town setting of them. Though some of the characters are very two-dimensional, I like the human (and once-human and part-human) stories, in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I just have to ignore the swooning and the moping and the constant descriptions of Edward's unearthly beauty.

In conclusion, the Twilight series so far is bad, really bad, and yet... fun. I certainly will be reading on.

Watch this space for reviews of the other books, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

Rilla of Ingleside, L M Montgomery

Contains spoilers!

Again, I'm writing about a book by L M Montgomery that isn't the obvious one, though getting closer each time, working backwards.

Rilla of Ingleside is the final book in the Anne of Green Gables sequence, but it is very different in tone from the first. I would go as far as to say that, contrary to popular belief, and the way it is now marketed, this is not a children's book at all, but a young adult novel. Clearly when the books were first published, there were not the distinctions we now have of a book being for "children" or "adults."

It is also a book that is sadly overlooked. If not exactly out of print in this country, certainly you can't buy it in the shops any more. As far as Puffin Classics are concerned, the series ends with Anne of Ingleside, with an unsettling foreboding of what is to come. Probably the casual fan, who's read the first book or two and seen the films would not know that Rilla or her prequel, Rainbow Valley even exist, and might well be shocked to read it. I'm currently losing myself in the book as I am trying to adapt it for a screenplay. I think it would work as a stand-alone drama, and, knowing I'd love to see it brought to life and not trusting anyone else to do it well - especially Kevin Sullivan who made the perfect first film of Anne, imperfect Sequel and travesty of a continuing story, realised the job is for me.

As a child I read all of the books, borrowing them from the library, but took in little. Reading Rilla, I think I got as far as finding out all the names of the Blythe children - being horrified that Anne would call her son Shirley! - and that Marilla had died off-stage, but only really cared about Anne. I'd taken the time to get to know her from her child but was still at the stage where grown ups were "boring" and their troubles far from my understanding. I don't know whether I skimmed the book without taking anything else in, not understanding the politics, caring for the gossip or understanding the historical context, or gave up after a few chapters.

I rediscovered the book when I was no younger than twenty, read it from dusk til dawn, and howled pretty much from start to finish.

Rilla is a coming-of-age story. It is a war story - the only Canadian account of World War 1 from the women's perspective (correct me if I'm wrong.) To me, it hits hard as a tragedy.

Bertha Marilla Blythe is Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter. She is fifteen, empty-headed, vain but lovable. Her novel shows her growing in maturity, bringing up an orphaned war-baby, battling joys and sorrows, friendships, parties and love. She is the last child left living at home through the turbulance of war, and it is through her eyes that we see the effect of war on those who are left behind.

For my A-Levels I studied for a year poetry, novels, diaries and non-fiction all written during or about the First World War, until it was coming out of my ears. My impression of that literature is that almost all the things we read were one of two extremes: Naive, idealistic patriotism, which in retrospect seemed hideously and tragically outdated when compared with the tales of horror and madness and incompetence - two views that seemed irreconcilable. There were those who knew - Wilfred Owen with "Dulce et Decorum Est" - and those who never did - Rupert Brooke with "The Soldier."

I would put Rilla onto the syllabus. Montgomery's view of war is not quite either of these. Certainly she was no pacifist. The only pacifist in the story is a stubborn, contrary, ranting church elder who makes himself ridiculous, and is often accused of being on the side of the Germans. (When adapting Whiskers-on-the-Moon I have to make it clear that it is he who is objectionable, not the fact of being a pacifist. My views are not the same as Susan's, for example, though I can no longer call myself an absolute pacifist I don't want to cause offence by implying what I don't mean. At the same time, I don't want to change the characters or the views from the author's intention. I've always pictured Whiskers as rather a Mr Collins-type figure, as portrayed in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice.)

Certainly at first, the young men of Glen St. Mary show excitement at the prospect of going to war, having a boys' own adventure. Jem, Anne Blythe's eldest son, even says "Hurrah!" That is at the beginning of the war. When he returns, at the end of the novel, he is changed. But the courage and sacrifice of the boys and men who fought in the war is never thrown into doubt.

Walter, the middle son, counters this jolly, naive excitement. He is the sensitive one, the dreamer of the family. He sees further than the other boys, past the glamour of the uniforms and the marching, to the blood, the pain and the heartbreak the four years of war are to bring.

It is Walter's journey that makes me call this book a tragedy, though that may be a misleading term. I'm not talking tragic antiheroes with their fatal flaw. All I'm saying is that this book makes me cry, and more, that it makes me hurt.

Walter Blythe does not join the army immediately. More: he resists. He despises himself because he cannot shake off the feeling that he must go - personified in his visions of the Pied Piper which make their first appearance in Rainbow Valley - but is afraid to. It is Walter's battles with his conscience that, for me, are at the heart of this book, the struggle for courage pitted against his love of the beauty of life and hatred of ugliness. When at last he enlists in the army, it is the book's great triumph, stronger (to me) than Rilla's commitment to bringing up baby Jims, or falling in love, or any growth in maturity.

Even if it were not foreboded as early on as in Anne of Ingleside, it is inevitable that Walter would be the one who is killed in battle. That, in itself is not what is so painful - favourite characters die in lots of books. It adds poignancy, regret, but the sorrow for the death of, say, Sirius Black, is clean. And Walter's story has closure. The chapter, "And so, goodnight," where Rilla - and we - read his final letter, written on the last night of his life, after "The Piper" appears in a premonition of his death, provides that.

"Rilla, the Piper will pipe me 'west' tomorrow. I feel sure of this. And Rilla, I'm not afraid. When you hear the news, remember that. I've won my own freedom here -- freedom from all fear. I shall never be afraid of anything again -- not of death -- nor of life, if after all I am to go on living."

The worst thing, the reason Rilla has such a painful effect to read is because of Anne. I first met her when I was seven or eight, and she was eleven. I write this as though she is a friend. Yes, I had imaginary friends as a kid. Yes, I cared about characters in books as though they were real. But Anne was more even than that. Anne was a part of me. I identified with her so closely I can't disconnect myself from her. I read that book dozens of times in my childhood. I knew it inside out. I knew her story, right up to her "happily ever after" at the end of Anne of the Island where she realised she loved Gilbert Blythe, had always loved him.

I didn't realise there was more.

Of course I knew there were other books. I'd even read some, if not taken in much detail. But the first three books were the ones in our house. They were the ones that were always there, constant friends. They were the books I grew up with.

Then, at seventeen I was fed a diet of World War 1. Spending a year in the company of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon et al does funny things to you. It could desensitise you after a while. But it didn't me.

Like Anne, like Walter, I've a vivid imagination. I feel things. And to come back to Anne's world; safe, timeless little Avonlea, and find it drawn into time, (the introduction of a telephone in the fourth or fifth book in the series being the first clue to that) and more - to a time I grew to know so well, in so much horror and heartbreak - I hated Montgomery for wishing that onto Anne, my Anne.

And yet, it happened. Sweet, precocious, slightly annoying infants in the middle of the nineteenth century did grow up, have families, and have their families torn apart by war. They didn't deserve it. And no, they never would be the same again. No one who lived through those four years could possibly come through unchanged. Watching the BBC's recent My Family at War demonstrates that.

Rilla is a bittersweet book. It should find its way into the World War 1 canon, because it is such a detailed, poignant depiction of the effect of war on those who stayed behind. And for that I love it. But if I read it as the end of the story that began with a chapter entitled "Mrs Rachel Lynde is Surprised," I can barely recognise it. I can barely recognise myself. Reading Anne of Green Gables, I am an innocent little girl again, with a pigtail and, yes, even the straw hat, possibly not yet much troubled even by the bullies that were to sap my confidence for ten, twelve or more years. Reading Rilla, I am a literature student who has studied that module at A-Level. The A Level student devours Rilla. She always did have a bit of a dark side. The child is bewildered by it. I have yet to find a way to reconcile the two Katies, though I am the same person. I am yet to reconcile Anne of Green Gables to being the same series as Rilla of Ingleside.

The Emily Series, L.M.Montgomery

A family friend once told me that her abiding memory of me was as a little, pigtailed girl wearing a straw hat and with her nose buried deep into the childhood classic Anne of Green Gables. The hat no longer fits, and pigtails are a thing of the past, but the Anne books are perhaps, of all the hundreds of books I have read in my lifetime, the novels which have influenced me the most; the redheaded heroine more of a kindred spirit than is perhaps natural for a character that has "no real existance." It would be only natural for me to open my book blog with a review of Anne of Green Gables, and a discussion of just why it is such an important book to me.

But I'm not going to. It's gone ten at night, too late to be able to do Anne Shirley justice, and too early for the magic to work that brings inspiration to life just at the time when I know I should be getting ready for bed. Instead I will write about one of Lucy Maud Montgomery's other heroines: Emily of New Moon. It is inevitable that there will be comparisons to the Green Gables series, but I hope you will forgive that.

I grew up with Anne Shirley since I was about seven, but had not heard of Emily Byrd Starr until a year or so ago. I stumbled across the first book in the series in a charity shop for the not-too-shabby price of 49p, and took it home.

The first thing that struck me about Emily was a peculiar phenomenon that she called "The Flash."

It always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it, and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond - only a glimpse - and heard a note of unearthly music [...] She could never recall it - never summon it - never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.

Reading this description made me shiver, because I realised I knew exactly what Montgomery was trying to say, though I couldn't have expressed it quite so myself. I once wrote:

Sometimes a sight, a word, an image, sends me right out of myself and I know I am in another world - a story. Sometimes it is so vivid it gets mixed up in my memory with reality, at other times I can't quite grasp it, like there is something beautiful just out of sight.

Emily's "Flash" is at the heart of the series, making remarkable a straightforward coming-of-age novel. No, not straight-forward. Anything but that.

Eerier than the Anne novels, Emily of New Moon has traces of the supernatural, all the unexplained, throughout the series. Hinted at with her "Flash," each tale has at least one incidence of the "second sight" which Montgomery never tries to explain away, or to explain. Emily 's is also a darker story than Anne's. Towards the end, in particular, I see traces of Montgomery's darker state of mind, of "white nights" and three o'clocks in the morning. I would find all this tied up in two themes: love and writing. There is the pain of misunderstandings that threaten the relationship between Emily and a childhood sweetheart, the pain of smiling through what seems like unbearable sorrow and forgiving a betrayal unknowingly commited. But there is more, and I would say it is all tied up with a character named Dean Priest.

Now, I don't know whether L.M.Montgomery intended Dean to be quite so creepy as I find him, but in the twenty first century... well! He is in his mid thirties when he meets Emily - she is a little girl of twelve. There is nothing wrong as such in his behaviour at first - but his mind! From the first time he meets her, he is waiting for her to grow up - he is waiting until she is old enough for him to love. And what starts off as mildly disturbing just grows and grows. When Emily is an adult, and the age difference between them is only an issue because of the "age difference" rather than her being a child, he slowly becomes a double of Mrs Kent, the possessive mother of Emily's friend Teddy. Mrs Kent will not allow Teddy to love anything lest it make him love her less. She hates anything he likes and will set out to destroy it, whether it be his artwork, his kittens or friendships. What I find to be the darkest part of the Emily series is when Dean echoes that so completely - in his jealousy, he lies to Emily in a way that destroys the writer within her for a time, and threatens to destroy her very essence.

For writing is the essence of Emily. She is a writer to her very core. When asked to give up her writing by a disapproving, old-fashioned aunt, Emily's reply that it's "[n]ot that I won't - it's just that I can't," strikes a chord with me. I couldn't stop being a writer. Even Emily, when she commits no fiction to paper for two years - a sacrifice I never would be able to make, for anyone or anything! - stories and characters grow, bursting to be written. Writers are advised that they should never write about writing, but Montgomery's ignoring of that rule was a successful putting into words of things that otherwise might remain unexpressed. The series is a story about coming of age as a woman, and as a person, but most of all as a writer. Some people write, other people are writers, and the Emily of New Moon series expresses just what it means to be the latter.

When I read the Emily books the first time, I wasn't sure I liked Emily, simply because she wasn't Anne. As a child I found Anne Shirley to be more even than a friend - it felt as though she was a part of me, a dreamer, an optimist, someone who loves people. Emily is certainly more down-to-earth than Anne, and while Anne's imagination is her defining characteristic, Emily is far more single-minded. It's not that writing is the only thing that matters to her - love, friendship and pride are also top priorities. But without her writing - she cannot be truly herself. In that brief period after Dean told that awful lie to her, she is almost a puppet, fooling nobody but herself that she is happy and fulfilled. Anne could live without writing, I think. She'd not stop imagining, or dreaming, but writing seems more of a fancy for her, rather than a desperate need. She could write, or she could not write. Emily could not not write.