Here’s a blog post that might get me in hot water – but I recently listened to the audiobook of Anne of Avonlea and, let me tell you, I felt let DOWN.
Anne of Avonlea (1909) is the second book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Until now, I had only read the original – and loved it. Anne is so spirited and fun, and there is a great deal of heart and humour in Anne of Green Gables. Fast forward to the next book, Anne is in her late teens, still living in Avonlea. All of the books are available for free in the Audible Plus catalogue, so I thought it was worth diving in.
Oh.
So much that made Anne of Green Gables wonderful is missing here. Anne is a schoolteacher, a founding member of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, a sort of grown-up foster sister to a pair of twins who arrive on the scene (more on them later), and generally a noble and good member of society.
The rest of this post is going to be in bullet point form, because that is the best to describe my disappointment. Though I’ll try to throw in some good things along the way.
- Anne is so Noble and Good in this book. She has become the quintessential heroine of a Victorian children’s novel (albeit this is later than that), thinking good thoughts and doing good deeds.
- ALL her spirit seems to have gone. I cannot emphasise how dull she is now.
- Gilbert Blythe gets maybe four lines of dialogue?
- Even in his most interesting scenes, writing pretend letters to someone, he barely appears.
- WHY SO LITTLE GILBERT?
- (I know he comes back in later books, but I cannot fathom why L.M. Montgomery took away one of the two most interesting relationships from Anne of Green Gables. The other was with Matthew, so I can at least see why that isn’t present.)
- Marilla takes in the twins, Dora and Davy. And lord knows I wish she hadn’t. Davy is forever doing naughty things then saying “Good gosh, Miss Anne, I had no notion this was a naughty thing to do! How will I ever repent of it when it was so fun?” and Dora just cries. How did an author who made a girl character like Anne also make these Boys Will Be Boys And Girls Will Cry characters? I loathed them.
- Mrs Lavendar Lewis was great, I will acknowledge. An old lady who is something of a recluse but brings joy and wit to every scene she’s in.
- Did I mention that there is basically no Gilbert?
I had planned to go on with the rest of the series, but I’m much more reluctant now. Anne has gone from one of the best characters in fiction to one of the most tedious – and, without her spark, the novel really dragged for me.
Others have promised me that the series looks up in later volumes. Does Anne get her spark back? Should I continue?
Anne becomes even more dull as the series continues. Eventually she becomes a nonentity as her children become the main characters and she remains in the background, acting nothing like the Anne we meet in Anne of Green Gables but this frivolous, ambitious-less ghost of her former self. Also, don’t expect more Gilbert. That ain’t gonna happen. That always frustrated me, the way his character just kind of evaporates.
Ah that is such a shame. What was she thinking??
The 3rd book in the series, Anne of the Island, is a favorite of mine and my sister’s. I’d say don’t give up just yet. I have great nostalgic love for these books but in re-reading them via audiobook this year have had some similar feelings. They don’t land the same way in my mid-30s as they did when I was a young girl. (I got very bored and kind of annoyed in the 4th book, Anne of Windy Poplars, so consider yourself warned. :)
Anne of the Island is my favourite as well. And I like Rilla of Ingleside, not so keen on Anne of Ingleside or The Rainbow Valley
It’s really helpful that everyone seems to have similar views on these…
Thanks Danielle!
Hi Simon
Ha ha! This made me laugh! As a child I was completely obsessed with Anne of Green Gables. I read and reread and reread the copy my mother had won at Sunday school when she was a child in Canada. Imagine my delight years later when I found a connection to LM Montgomery in my family tree!
Anyway one birthday I received all the sequels as a surprise from my Granny and was beyond excited to begin. I never finished them. Why? For the same reason as you! Anne becomes a bit of vomit inducing grown up Pollyanna and I fell out of love with the boring grown up Gilbert. However … after reading your blog I think I will try again, for old time’s sake and with a big pinch of salt. Thank you :)
ps the other 1950s Canadian Sunday School prizes I adored were What Katy Did and Eight Cousins (or The Aunt Hill) by Louisa May Alcott
Best wishes
Jo
Haha! Oh that most have been so tragic, after all that excitement. But how wonderful to have LMM as a distant relative!
Migosh, I got “What Katy Did” as a prize as well!
Thank you for assuaging my guilt at not going beyond the first book in the series! I enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, but as the cliche
Goes,’”So many books, so little time.”
I think that was a wise decision! Keep the wonderful book preserved.
Your point re: Davy & Dora is definitely well-taken. Davy isn’t mischievous, he’s unhinged, and poor Dora, the good girl, is roundly disliked for her good-behavior. As a former good girl, it’s terribly unfair. Anne of Avonlea is not my favorite Anne. But Miss Lavender and Paul are lovely, aren’t they? And is this the book with the “Little Fellow,” because if it is, that scene always has me in sobs.
Are you going to listen to Anne of the Island? Anne and Gilbert and the gang to off to college and it’s delightful. There’s a section of the book where Anne moves into a house with her besties that is possibly my favorite part of the entire series. It still resonates, more than a century later.
I am encouraged, by replies here and on Twitter, to keep going with Book 3 – so we’ll see how that goes!
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Anne of the Island is actually my favorite of the series!
Oo good to know, Megan!
I haven’t read the books since I was a child so it was very interesting to hear an adult perspective! I will say Anne of the Island (Book 3) was my favourite. It might be worth trying one more? I want to go back and reread them now to see if my view has changed!
That does seem to be the consensus, thank you!!
Written in 1909, a time of educational reform in Canada (which had only become a country in 1867), the strict Presbyterian educational rigour (which condoned whipping children) was giving way before educational theorists who posited that a more persuasive approach might be more useful. Montgomery herself was raised in the Presbyterian style which, although it highly valued education, was pretty rigid, so I think she was working her way through the pros and cons in this book via Anne the teacher.
It was also a time of political upheaval, with long held Conservative bastions giving way to the Liberal Grits which also crept into this story. None of this would be very interesting to someone looking for much loved characters from the first book except perhaps for a student of Canadian history interested in Anne’s thoughts about it all.
LMM was actively pursued by several men at the time of writing, enjoying their friendships but not having fallen in love with any of them. Did she shelve Gilbert because she didn’t quite know what to do with him as Anne’s love interest? Was she more interested in Anne’s intellectual and professional life as opposed to her romantic one? Answer have I none. Maybe try the next one to see if it sits better?
Thank you for this info. Absolutely fascinating. I will revisit her with a different view :)
That’s very interesting context, thanks Tui – both her LMM’s life and for what was going on in the world at the time.
LOL, your post did make me laugh Simon! I can only be certain of reading the first one, and that was longer ago than I care to acknowledge, so I can be of no help. But if I were you I would be wary…
The first one was that rare thing – a children’s book I enjoyed a huge amount despite only reading it in my 30s for the first time.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company: Anne of Avonlea is ridiculous, for all the reasons you mention – and one you didn’t: Paul. I flipping hate Paul and have ever since I first encountered him when I was eight.
But things get better! Anne of the Island is superb so have faith and read on! I wrote a few years ago about all the reasons I love it (and why I don’t love Anne of Avonlea): https://thecaptivereader.com/2018/11/12/more-anne-anne-of-avonlea-and-anne-of-the-island-by-l-m-montgomery/
I couldn’t even bring myself to write about Paul :D
Interesting! I read and enjoyed all the Anne books as a child, but I can’t say I brought a very literary eye to them. I’ve re-read some of them as an adult, and I do think the next three or so still have enough interesting characters and changes of setting to make them worthwhile reading. (Be aware that there’s still *a lot* of Davy and Dora in Anne of the Island.)
In Anne of Windy Poplars (or, I think the British title is Windy Willows?), she becomes principal of a girls school in another city, and there are lots of fun episodic narratives about very memorable characters she runs into.
After book 5, she does tend to subside into the perfect wife and mother, and the books become more about her children.
Ooo good to be warned that Davy and Dora continue. May I hope they become less awful as time goes on??
I think you can expect Davy and Dora to be about the same in book 3, but they do pretty much vanish after that as Anne moves farther afield!
Thanks!
Ditch Anne … instead read The Story Girl and then The Golden Road …
those are treasures …
Interesting! I haven’t heard of those.
https://www.scribd.com/book/359500272/The-Story-Girl-The-Golden-Road
I enjoyed the series till she gets married, then I felt Anne was lost. Though I didn’t mind the one with her children grown up since she’s hardly in it and I don’t see it as an Anne book. I second the recommendation above for Story Girl, I loved both those, also Jane of Lantern Hill, and also Blue Castle despite it’s going rather over the top at the end.
I remember Blue Castle being reprinted back in my early days of blogging, maybe by Hesperus, and people really loving it.
When I was a child I was given a “three in one” hardback of Anne of Green Gables and then the number 3 and 4 of the series, without Anne of Avonlea. Now I think I know why someone packaged it that way!
Oh yes, they saved you!!
Try another in the series
that does seem to be the main thought, yep :)
Funny, I disliked the first book! But yes, there is more in later books so keep listening or reading.
Interesting! What didn’t you like?
Apologies if others have said this, but ditch Anne and read the Emily of New Moon series instead, only 3 books and much more interesting. Virago published a couple of other of her children’s titles too (names escape me right now) but they were also fun. There are a couple of adult novels that are worth a look as well, and some ghost stories that I occasionally dream of finding.
Good to know! Not sure if they are in the Audible Plus catalogue, which is one of my main criteria at the moment…
Refreshing and accurate. I personally never really cottoned to the whole series; I’m definitely in the oddity class because I admire Montgomery’s own journals much more, as women’s writing that though dark, is realistic. Her fiction is mostly too sugary for me.
I am definitely intrigued by those journals now… Might be like Madeleine L’Engle, where I loved the journal and disliked the fiction.
Yes, I agree. I loved the series as a child, and years later I re-read Anne of Green Gables. It was great. Then I tried the second book. It was horrible, and Anne doesn’t translate very well into an adult. The very traits that make her a charming child are hard to bear.
Amen and amen!
Very interesting, and makes me want to revisit at least the first book as an adult! Have you explored much of the PG Wodehouse on Audible Plus? Martin Jarvis, Frederick Davidson, and *especially* Jonathan Cecil – all do such a fantastic job with Wodehouse and I think dozens of the books are included in the Plus catalogue.
I have listened to some! I’ve only found a handful in the Audible Plus catalogue so far, but will keep hunting – I agree, Jonathan Cecil is absolutely the best Wodehouse reader.
Keep going until you get to the final book of the series, Rilla of Ingleside, and then you will be rewarded with a wonderful read. When I was younger I was always disappointed in the books that followed Anne of Green Gables for many of the same reasons as you. However, time has changed my perspective and Anne’s House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley and Rilla are now my favourites, with Rilla of Ingleside the only one I regularly re-visit. It’s true that Anne is not the focus, and Gilbert is barely there, but there are many other wonderful new characters to meet and enjoy.
A lot of people do seem very keen on that one – I might cheat and skip to it…
I think I’ve only read the first two, but it was in my childhood and I might not even have known there were others. I’m going to consult my mother and report back.
Yes, in a pre-internet era one really relied on libraries to tell us what was in a series!
Can’t comment on Anne of Avonlea, since it may well be nearly half a century since I read L.M. Montgomery. But your post did make me laugh. Might there be a ‘disappointing reads’ virtual book club in it? I”d have to have a think, but recent failures to progress through a novel about which I’ve heard great things have included: Ali Smith, Autumn; and Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (I know! sacrilege!)
I am with you with My Brilliant Friend! I really didn’t see what the fuss was about, sadly.
I’ve read the whole series more than once and I agree that Anne gets more and more dull as she and Gilbert become very conservative. As someone said, by the last books, her children have become the main characters. I found their attitude to the First World War unbelievable and felt that LMM was using her characters to express her own opinions. LMM still excelled at describing the countryside and atmosphere of PEI. I also like the way that Anne keeps up her early friendship with Diana.
I second the recommendation of Jane of Lantern Hill.
Oh interesting to know what their WW1 opinions were…
Anne of the island is the best in the series. She ages with her books and although it may not be everyone’s cup of tea..her married life and the smaller but not always insignificant issues that she deals with felt very well done to me. She loses her exuberance but not always her spark 😅 atleast that’s how I ended up feeling.
I like that division between exuberance and spark, very insightful!
I loved the Anne series as a child but find them unreadable as an adult (even the first book, sadly!) except Rilla of Ingleside which, as others have said, is excellent and well worth skipping forward to. I also second the recommendation to read the Emily books instead.
I am glad that people are almost all in agreement on this, makes it very helpful!
What an act of bookish bravery. Heheh But you must feel redeemed with so many readers sharing your disappointment. As a girl, I loved the twins, but found them excruciating on rereads. (The boy in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire also annoys me!) As a girl, I also adored the idea of their romance but wasn’t interested in reading about it becoming serious, so I reread the first three volumes more than all the rest (all the talk of love in letters they later exchange drove me mad, even though that volume is a favourite with many readers, and one I enjoyed a great deal on rereading). The only fresh point that I feel I can contribute here (which I don’t think appears in the other comments, which are a delight to read for all the vairied opinions and age-old debates, like Anne Versus Emily) is the fact that LMM did not want to continue writing about Anne. She had other plans, but she felt obliged to continue (to satisfy both publisher and fans). Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston have both written widely on LMM and published on author and works and her journals. If you get really into her, I know the routes to all the Ontario sites that would be perfect for pilgrimages. Hee hee
I really did feel like I was being brave here, so it is a surprise and a relief to find everyone else agrees too :D
Emily of New Moon is wonderful and perhaps my favourite next to Anne is the Blue Castle – read that as an adult and loved.
They have got rave reviews in the comments, which is encouraging!
I’d forgotten about Davy and Dora. They definitely could have been left out of this book. I’m a huge Anne fan, but some books in the series are better than others. I enjoyed Anne of the Island, and also Anne’s House of Dreams – her first year of marriage to Gilbert. Then, in Anne of Ingleside, her children are the main characters, and there are a few incidents where Anne is disappointingly snobbish. The Anne of Anne of Green Gables would never be a snob!
Oh no, definitely can’t see her being a snob! That is a surprise.
I feel the same way, and have read it only once a long time ago. But I’ll tell you the one I really love is Anne of Windy Poplars. It is an epistolary story which I love. And I named our farm, Windy Poplars!
Oh what a lovely tribute, Nan!
Not a big fan of Avonlea either, but Island is one of my absolute favourite comfort reads, I would definitely suggest giving book 3 a try at least. Personally I’m not a big fan of Windy willows either a I detest Anne of Ingleside, but house of dreams, rainbow valley and particularly Rilla are good if you don’t mind Anne not being as much of the focus. For me Island and Rilla are up there with Anne of GG although all for different reasons.
Definitely going to go onto book 3, after all the encouragement here :)
As a young adult, I like you, loved the first book and by the time I got to Book #3 Anne of the Island ,
I decided it wasn’t worth any more of my precious reading time and gave up. I have never ventured back into the series and have had no regrets.
It sounds like you’re not missing much, except maybe the final book!
If you do read some of the later books, you might notice some similarities between Anne and some of the secondary characters and some of O. Douglas’s, something I noticed while reading Penny Plain and Pink Sugar, in particular. So you could find that amusing to compare. It’s most noticeable in Anne of Windy Pillars and Ann’s House of Dreams, I think.
Good point! I also noticed similarities with LMM when I was reading Pink Sugar. It think it must be the combination of community novel, which is often a female genre, and Scottish heritage.
Yes, I think similar themes and the Scottish background explain a lot off the similarities. I wonder if O. Douglas read any of LMM’s works.
I do like O Douglas, when I’m in the mood for something very sweet.
I also preferred Anne of Windy Poplars to #2 and #3. I also liked The Blue Castle which is a stand-alone novel. Montgomery can be hit or miss, though, I tried reading an older novel called Kilmeny of the Orchard that was SO BAD I nearly threw the book out the window. I had found a beautiful early edition and was quite smug about it but then realized it was a bargain because it’s just awful. Blech.
Maybe Anne is one of those series you have to start with as a child — though neither of my girls were much interested, there are too many others fighting for shelf space in the library and bookstore these days. I wonder if it’s mostly nostalgic Gen Xers and Boomers who are enjoying her books!
I hated Kilmeny too – its awful. But still love her other books.
Kilmeny was reworked into a novel from a short story under enormous pressure from her publisher who expoited her and other women writers. If you knew the back story you’d be less judgemental about it.
Thankfully I still loved the first one, despite not reading it until I was quite old. But maybe the whole series needs some nostaglia.
Anne of the Island, again. But I read a series of re-reads by another blogger and there’s also casual cat cruelty in later ones, as I recall reading about, so I haven’t re-read them though I still love the original.
Ah, good to know
Hello Simon! Every reader is entitled to an opinion, but I beg to differ with this one and most of the comments!
I love every word LMM has written, even her less successful novels, and I actually do like Anne of Avonlea a lot. I reread it again this spring and loved the occassional insights into human nature (especially concerning Anne’s friendship with Mrs Lavendar) and the beautiful pictures the writing created in my head! To me, the book is like reading a lot of extras about the Avonlea world, and I enjoyed it very much for the details and small incidents (I was especially happy to know that Marilla didn’t give up making currant wine after the unfortunate tea party where Diana got drunk!). Anne (and Paul) are idealistic, but I guess it is part of Montgomery’s philosophy that it’s better to be a dreamer than someone oblivious to beauty. Some readers might find it a bit preachy, but Montgomery was a dreamer herself, and, being another dreamer, I do like this about the book.
As for Gilbert, I never noticed especially that he was absent, but generally it’s Montgomery’s trademark that the most special bonds are not romantic relationships but girl friendships or child-adult relationships. I actually think the core of the original Anne is her relationship with Marilla and the transformation Marilla undergoes through Anne, it touched me most about the book.
Davy can be a bit irritating, but someone has to make mischief when Anne is so proper, and I always read Dora as Montgomery’s expression of dislike for “pictures of perfection” and the Victorian ideal of a submissive girl who is seen but nor heard.
It’s also good to know the background. Montgomery herself wasn’t as pleased with AoA as she would like to be (when she wrote Anne she never ever intended sequels), but knowing the pressure she was working under, she did a brilliant job between satisfying the demands of the market and genre and keeping true to herself.
The trouble with the later Anne books is that everyone is comparing them to the first novel, but if you read them as more or less independent books, you start seeing each of them has merits of its own.
I don’t think Anne becomes boring towards the end of the series, it’s just that the focus changes towards other characters and the community gossip, and we barely see her. Still, through the rare glimpses we get of her we are shown that she’s kept her love of dreaming and a bit of subversiveness, even when she’s a doctor’s wife with many children.
Apologies for this long post. As a long-time Montgomery lover turned Montgomery scholar and her biggest advocate, I felt the need to shield her a little. I didn’t intend to lecture but the “imperfections” of the later novels really make sense when you reread them later in life with added life experience and when you know a bit more about the context in which they were written. I suggest you don’t go by the less encouraging comments and keep reading to find out for yourself if you like the further books or not! :-)
By the way, I’ve been a big fan of your book discussions with Rachel on the Tea or Books podcast for quite a few years. Now Anne has prompted me to get in touch and say it ;-)
Thanks for your interesting and thorough insights! And thank you for supporting the podcast :)
You are right about Anne of Avonlea and I wonder if this is why my 13 year old niece stalled after AOGG. I had forgotten how tedious Davy and Dora are. As others have said, Anne of the Island is fun, both for the glimpse of college life in that era and also because Anne’s romantic hero makes an appearance. Rilla of Ingleside, about Anne’s youngest daughter, is delightful and includes much of the humor that make AOGG enjoyable.
The three book series about Emily is more autobiographical, has less humor (although some), and is very intense but I love it. The first one features an encounter between Emily and an Irish priest that is very funny so I shouldn’t say there is no humor. When I visited Prince Edward Island about 8 years ago I was surprised there was no mention of Emily but those books were not always in print, I believe.
Emily is getting so many recommendations, which is really encouraging
I just listened to the latest podcast and had to look up this post after hearing what you said about this book having no bite. I agree. I’ve found the Anne books (save the first one) to be a real slog. It’s like a totally different character has assumed Anne’s identity and I find the later books to be real yawners.
I see some folks above have recommended the Emily of New Moon series, and I want to do the same. I actually prefer that series to the Anne books. They are darker, and there’s one character who is VERY high on the ick factor and has not aged well — you’ll know him when you read him — but Emily and her friend Ilse are fully-realized characters and definitely have bite. I’d love to hear you and Rachel do the Emily vs. Anne debate! Maybe a good topic for a future episode?
Thanks for another Emily recommendation! That’s a good idea for an episode – we did do Anne in an episode against Daddy Long-Legs, but could revisit.