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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Publishers received the typescript of this book April 24, 1942, the day Montgomery died from a drug overdose (possibly suicide). This ninth "Anne" book represents a new experiment for Montgomery's storytelling. The book contains 15 short stories that reference the Blythe family. Poems attributed to Anne and Walter and commentary from the family loosely weave together the stories.
Publishers sat on the book for 30 years. In 1974 an abridged version was published as The Road to Yesterday. This version left out all of the family's commentary, removed one of the stories (later published in another short story collection), removed all but one of the poems, reordered the stories, and removed material from some of the stories. Often, the removed material is darker and more pessimistic than most of Montgomery's material.
This book shows Montgomery's struggle with the two world wars. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is before WWI and the second book occurs after WWI and into to WWII. The second half of the book is decidedly more grim than the first half. Anne's poetry shows more pessimism, and you often see Anne on the verge of breaking down as she reads Walter's poetry.
The two poems that bookend the text highlight the struggle. Walter's patriotic poem "The Piper", which made him famous in Rilla of Ingleside starts the book. The book ends with "The Aftermath", a grim poem about death and war that Walter wrote just before his death. The later poem sets up the dialog that ends the book. Anne says, "I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back. He could never have lived with his memories ... and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust ...". Montgomery left this final poem and dialog out of some manuscripts, but it truly highlights the ambiguity present throughout The Blythes are Quoted.
Publishers sat on the book for 30 years. In 1974 an abridged version was published as The Road to Yesterday. This version left out all of the family's commentary, removed one of the stories (later published in another short story collection), removed all but one of the poems, reordered the stories, and removed material from some of the stories. Often, the removed material is darker and more pessimistic than most of Montgomery's material.
This book shows Montgomery's struggle with the two world wars. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is before WWI and the second book occurs after WWI and into to WWII. The second half of the book is decidedly more grim than the first half. Anne's poetry shows more pessimism, and you often see Anne on the verge of breaking down as she reads Walter's poetry.
The two poems that bookend the text highlight the struggle. Walter's patriotic poem "The Piper", which made him famous in Rilla of Ingleside starts the book. The book ends with "The Aftermath", a grim poem about death and war that Walter wrote just before his death. The later poem sets up the dialog that ends the book. Anne says, "I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back. He could never have lived with his memories ... and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust ...". Montgomery left this final poem and dialog out of some manuscripts, but it truly highlights the ambiguity present throughout The Blythes are Quoted.
What a melancholy book. (There will be some spoilers here for the story of the Blythe family: be warned.) A collection of stories in which the Blythes are more or less tangential – "quoted", bracketed by post-Great War snippets of Blythe conversation and poetry by Anne and Walter. Actually, in a fair number of them the Blythes are loathed, which feels strange – and, to LMM's credit, is not necessarily an indicator of whether we ought to like the character doing the loathing. Some are bad 'uns – but not all.
Oh, Walter.
There are some strange patterns in the stories collected in The Blythes Are Quoted. Those who don't like Anne ("Uncle Stephen did not like the Blythes ... he said he did not like educated women" … "Nobody in the Brewster clan, it seemed, approved of the Blythes" … "Miss Shelley could not conceive of Mrs. Blythe cherishing bitterness for thirty years. She liked her but she thought her too shallow for that.") and who feel slighted by them ("I hinted it to Dr. Blythe ... and such a snub as he gave me! And Dr. Blythe can give snubs when he wants to, I can assure you.") As I said, it's unsettling to run into this attitude.
Then there is an alarming theme of animal abuse, looked at completely differently than we do now ("Even if you'd taken the money and burned the binder house I'd have wanted you" – this to someone who killed a dog and a cat and chickens and a goat; "'what [they] did to the kitten' ... That memory was intolerable") – and, on a similar track, fox farms. In three separate stories foxes are mentioned as a commodity. Odd.
There was also a sort of a theme of unresolved questions. "Epworth Rectory. I don't think that mystery has ever been solved." "Susan, to herself:-'I could tell them the story of that fiddle if I liked. But I won't. It's too sad.'" (Thank you, Susan – there was enough sadness in this book as it was.)
There are still all the things I've always loved about L.M. Montgomery's writing: humor ("Chrissie felt much better. 'In about twenty years or so I'll be pretty well over it,' she said") and pathos (not always a bad thing) and solid story-telling. But this is the dark side, keeping uppermost in my mind throughout the book that Lucy Maud took her own life. Grief and haunting and regret and pain … there are still happy endings. But the interspersed Blythe reminiscences and conversation are a reminder that "happily ever after" never takes into account wars and the deaths of children. It was surprisingly hard to read … I don't think The Blythes Are Quoted is going to be part of my semi-annual LMM-reread.
Oh, Walter.
There are some strange patterns in the stories collected in The Blythes Are Quoted. Those who don't like Anne ("Uncle Stephen did not like the Blythes ... he said he did not like educated women" … "Nobody in the Brewster clan, it seemed, approved of the Blythes" … "Miss Shelley could not conceive of Mrs. Blythe cherishing bitterness for thirty years. She liked her but she thought her too shallow for that.") and who feel slighted by them ("I hinted it to Dr. Blythe ... and such a snub as he gave me! And Dr. Blythe can give snubs when he wants to, I can assure you.") As I said, it's unsettling to run into this attitude.
Then there is an alarming theme of animal abuse, looked at completely differently than we do now ("Even if you'd taken the money and burned the binder house I'd have wanted you" – this to someone who killed a dog and a cat and chickens and a goat; "'what [they] did to the kitten' ... That memory was intolerable") – and, on a similar track, fox farms. In three separate stories foxes are mentioned as a commodity. Odd.
There was also a sort of a theme of unresolved questions. "Epworth Rectory. I don't think that mystery has ever been solved." "Susan, to herself:-'I could tell them the story of that fiddle if I liked. But I won't. It's too sad.'" (Thank you, Susan – there was enough sadness in this book as it was.)
There are still all the things I've always loved about L.M. Montgomery's writing: humor ("Chrissie felt much better. 'In about twenty years or so I'll be pretty well over it,' she said") and pathos (not always a bad thing) and solid story-telling. But this is the dark side, keeping uppermost in my mind throughout the book that Lucy Maud took her own life. Grief and haunting and regret and pain … there are still happy endings. But the interspersed Blythe reminiscences and conversation are a reminder that "happily ever after" never takes into account wars and the deaths of children. It was surprisingly hard to read … I don't think The Blythes Are Quoted is going to be part of my semi-annual LMM-reread.
I don't know what to think about this collection of poems and short stories by LM Montgomery. I knew that the stories wouldn't be about Gilbert and Anne, or any of their children, but I had no idea the stories would be so dark.
I really enjoyed a few of the stories, but it seems like the Blythes were name dropped numerous times in each story. I found myself skimming every time "Mrs. Dr. Blythe" was mentioned (even though Anne is my favorite literary heroine ever). It was just tedious after awhile.
If you go into reading this expecting there to be lots of Blythes, you will be disappointed. However, if you go into this realizing the stories are about other members of the community, and are fine with just little vignettes from Anne, Gilbert, Susan, and children, then you will enjoy the book.
I really enjoyed a few of the stories, but it seems like the Blythes were name dropped numerous times in each story. I found myself skimming every time "Mrs. Dr. Blythe" was mentioned (even though Anne is my favorite literary heroine ever). It was just tedious after awhile.
If you go into reading this expecting there to be lots of Blythes, you will be disappointed. However, if you go into this realizing the stories are about other members of the community, and are fine with just little vignettes from Anne, Gilbert, Susan, and children, then you will enjoy the book.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I think this is more of a curiosity for the die-hard L. M. Montgomery fan than something you would just casually enjoy. There were a couple standout poems and stories, though.
I really like her writing but I just wasn't really into the short stories and they don't tie together
It's been ages since I've read the bulk of these stories in The Road to Yesterday, so I can't speak to how much they were re-adapted for that book, but they're still fun stories, if occasionally mind-blowing. (I'm sorry, but it's still such a strange thing to think of Anne and Gilbert in their mid-to-late 70s!) The poetry's not my favorite thing, but that's just because I'm not a big poetry reader; however, the vignettes are really great. I love the glimpses into Ingleside life, of them not doing much but sitting around reading and talking; it makes you feel like you're part of the family, almost.
This could maybe have been edited into something pretty good. I appreciate the experimental format. In reading the afterword, one comes to understand why it was not much edited, but I think that should have been in the foreword, instead. Besides the inconsistencies that would have been worked out during a standard editing process, a reworking of some of the stories is needed, and the continual references to the awesome or awful Blythes could have been managed more smoothly, though of course there was no need for about 90% of them. People very often tell each other what Susan Baker says, but we don’t usually have any idea why they’d know her or have her patter memorized. In one case, the people quoting her live twenty miles away, which was a rather fair distance 100 years ago when the story was set.
Even though most of the poetry isn't very good, I had no problem with its inclusion, mainly because it was intended to appear as though Anne and Walter wrote it, and no matter how good a poet is, not every poem he or she writes will be a complete gem. These poems have a real poignancy as they are tied to the commentary that follows, and that commentary forms the best part of the book. And some of them do have a real poetic spark, which is nice to come upon.
People who find this book darker than the rest, well, I think maybe they don't fully remember the rest, beyond the first book. There's darkness and something a bit sensational in nearly everything Montgomery wrote. But there is a weary bitterness to these stories not found in most of the others. Her final note indicates her disappointment with herself and the belief that she hasn't succeeded with it or with her current state of being. Well, suppose she'd gone on to live through the reshaping of this book. She'd have left with something rather finer. But she was unable to do so, for reasons that are wholly her own, and so while I understand the editor's desire to respect her final effort, my respect would have led me to annotate the inconsistencies which are not uncommon in a long writing career, and also to have lightly reshaped this into something that showed more strongly Montgomery's clear disappointment with the world not having learned any lasting lessons after the Great War. Most of us would not ask for our wholly unedited manuscripts to stand as our final life testament, I think.
Even though most of the poetry isn't very good, I had no problem with its inclusion, mainly because it was intended to appear as though Anne and Walter wrote it, and no matter how good a poet is, not every poem he or she writes will be a complete gem. These poems have a real poignancy as they are tied to the commentary that follows, and that commentary forms the best part of the book. And some of them do have a real poetic spark, which is nice to come upon.
People who find this book darker than the rest, well, I think maybe they don't fully remember the rest, beyond the first book. There's darkness and something a bit sensational in nearly everything Montgomery wrote. But there is a weary bitterness to these stories not found in most of the others. Her final note indicates her disappointment with herself and the belief that she hasn't succeeded with it or with her current state of being. Well, suppose she'd gone on to live through the reshaping of this book. She'd have left with something rather finer. But she was unable to do so, for reasons that are wholly her own, and so while I understand the editor's desire to respect her final effort, my respect would have led me to annotate the inconsistencies which are not uncommon in a long writing career, and also to have lightly reshaped this into something that showed more strongly Montgomery's clear disappointment with the world not having learned any lasting lessons after the Great War. Most of us would not ask for our wholly unedited manuscripts to stand as our final life testament, I think.
So much darker than the rest of the series. There were definitely stories here that I had to stop and pause before reading, since there are themes of misogyny and hatred in some of them. Others are the sort of adorable falling in love stories that I love from Montgomery. One was quite iffy for me though;
The Pot and the Kettle.
Favorites:
* Some Fools and a Saint : Wow, is this one fascinating.
* The Twins Pretend was quite adorable.
* Fancy's Fool was ghostly and cute, and I liked the fact that Dr. Gilbert Blythe finally was right about a couple.
* A Dream Comes True was hilarious.
* The Cheated Child was beautiful. A very poignant story with elements of pride and wistfulness.
* Fool's Errand was also cute, though I would have liked more emotion to it.
* The Road to Yesterday
The Pot and the Kettle.
Spoiler
On first reading it I thought he'd concocted the whole scheme to marry her for her money; but it seems maybe he saw her, fell in love at first sight, and then concocted a scheme to make sure she'd marry him anyway? Unclear.Favorites:
* Some Fools and a Saint : Wow, is this one fascinating.
Spoiler
I don't think I've seen this much hatred in a story since maybe East of Eden? But that's one of my rereads. I loved this story, even though it gave me the chills.* The Twins Pretend was quite adorable.
* Fancy's Fool was ghostly and cute, and I liked the fact that Dr. Gilbert Blythe finally was right about a couple.
* A Dream Comes True was hilarious.
* The Cheated Child was beautiful. A very poignant story with elements of pride and wistfulness.
* Fool's Errand was also cute, though I would have liked more emotion to it.
* The Road to Yesterday