Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I'm glad Anne and Gilbert finally get married after their distance apart. Even though sort of gets swept away with being a wife, we still see parts of imaginative Anne. I really enjoy that the author wrote about Anne's hardships with motherhood and her changes through it with her relationships.
emotional
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I missed a lot of the previous characters. I feel like we're meeting new characters and falling with love with them only to have them more or less disappear without a trace in the next book. Though I do suppose Anne's story is much like real life in this aspect.
I loved this book as I have loved all the other books in the series though I feel like a lot happened ... off screen(?) a lot was simply described as having happened instead of actually shown and felt.
All in all, I love Anne and I love Gilbert and I love their relationship.
I loved this book as I have loved all the other books in the series though I feel like a lot happened ... off screen(?) a lot was simply described as having happened instead of actually shown and felt.
All in all, I love Anne and I love Gilbert and I love their relationship.
Read May - June 2018
As I slowly make my way back through all of the Anne books, I have found that I don’t remember them nearly as well as I would have expected, back when I was 8-12…and reading and rereading them just about as often as they were available in the library. My third grade teacher gave me a battered brown copy holding the first three books, and the public library had Rainbow Valley, and when I got to middle school the whole set was there. I know that I read them out of order, but I don’t remember when I got around to House of Dreams. I suspect it was a little later, because I remember the storyline much more vividly than I have been able to recall any of the others (except, of course, the first).
I remembered crying over baby Joy and feeling every tear that Anne cried when she had to abandon this house. I remembered Captain Jim and his stories and his lost love and his feline First Mate. I even remembered the drama of George and Dick Moore (although admittedly only when it came back to me in a flash at the start of Anne and Gilbert’s little battle over moral duty.)
I think it’s good that I read this book back then, when I could love it properly. I’m not sure I would have loved it now, if the rose-tinted affection of nostalgia hadn’t been there to color the pages and the plot this time around. I worry that Anne has lost her spark and her ambition, as she sits content to be a stay at home wife and seems even to abandon her writing aspirations. She repeatedly downplays her worth as a writer and tries to pass along opportunities to write to anyone “better” than her: she wants Paul to write Captain Jim’s Life-Book, but Paul is touring the continent for two years and is unable to come; then at the very first opportunity when she hears of a boarder who writes, who is a stranger to her, and whose writing she has never read. Anne’s first thought when she read Captain Jim’s own writing, was to think that any storyteller with a little skill could take Jim’s stories and make a wonderful book; it rubs me the wrong way that she didn’t feel up to the task. I understand that not every writer is suited to every genre, but it felt like Anne was being self-deprecating rather than self-aware.
I also feel as though the Anne who has spent many years teaching and running schools and taking charge of her life and her finances would have gone a little stir crazy to suddenly find herself a housewife without her work or even community service to keep her busy (the Anne who was the driving force behind the Avonlea Village Improvement Society would have been disappointed). Every ambition she ever had seems to have been replaced by a desire to be a perfect wife and mother; it almost feels as though the death of her child would have been an even more crippling blow than it was in these circumstances, with all of her old ideals gone and just this one driving force to put her spirit behind. I’m glad the loss didn’t break her completely, but I have an uneasy feeling that it probably should have.
The Leslie Moore plot is really surprisingly dark as well. Leslie’s entire life has been trampled on by abuse, from the severe emotional manipulation her mother used to control her, to the complete bag-of-garbage human that was Dick Moore. Dick had a severely shady reputation that is never spoken of directly, but it is sharply implied that he severely hurt a woman over at the Glen; he threatens to take Leslie’s mothers house away and uses this blackmail to force her into marrying him. He was a violent and loud alcoholic and the world is better without him. There are several heartbreaking scenes where it is immediately clear that misogyny and abuse have damaged the development of Leslie’s entire personality. “‘Do you remember, Anne,’ said Leslie slowly, ‘that I once said—that night we met on the shore—that I hated my good looks? I did—then. It always seemed to me that if I had been homely Dick would never have thought of me.’”
Also, for a book about a pair of newlyweds, Gilbert is really surprisingly absent from the story. Which may be just as well, because I was really not a fan of the way he approached disagreements with Anne—he seems to have adopted a pattern of just telling Anne he is going to do something she won’t like and leaving it to her to apologize for getting upset. (Cases in point: the trephining surgery, moving to a new house). It doesn’t really seem to matter if he’s “right,” because he doesn’t even remotely listen to Anne’s side of the argument, but he is (irritatingly) always “right.” I would have been willing to through down with Gilbert and Captain Jim over the whole ‘women are too emotional to make rational decisions’ garbage when discussing the trephining surgery. It was admittedly a thorny moral quandary, but having things so dramatically play out in favor of Gilbert’s decision downplays the fact that there really WERE two very options and that Gilbert’s plan could have had catastrophic results not just for Leslie’s finances, but for her personal physical safety.
I don’t know how I feel about this one.
As I slowly make my way back through all of the Anne books, I have found that I don’t remember them nearly as well as I would have expected, back when I was 8-12…and reading and rereading them just about as often as they were available in the library. My third grade teacher gave me a battered brown copy holding the first three books, and the public library had Rainbow Valley, and when I got to middle school the whole set was there. I know that I read them out of order, but I don’t remember when I got around to House of Dreams. I suspect it was a little later, because I remember the storyline much more vividly than I have been able to recall any of the others (except, of course, the first).
I remembered crying over baby Joy and feeling every tear that Anne cried when she had to abandon this house. I remembered Captain Jim and his stories and his lost love and his feline First Mate. I even remembered the drama of George and Dick Moore (although admittedly only when it came back to me in a flash at the start of Anne and Gilbert’s little battle over moral duty.)
I think it’s good that I read this book back then, when I could love it properly. I’m not sure I would have loved it now, if the rose-tinted affection of nostalgia hadn’t been there to color the pages and the plot this time around. I worry that Anne has lost her spark and her ambition, as she sits content to be a stay at home wife and seems even to abandon her writing aspirations. She repeatedly downplays her worth as a writer and tries to pass along opportunities to write to anyone “better” than her: she wants Paul to write Captain Jim’s Life-Book, but Paul is touring the continent for two years and is unable to come; then at the very first opportunity when she hears of a boarder who writes, who is a stranger to her, and whose writing she has never read. Anne’s first thought when she read Captain Jim’s own writing, was to think that any storyteller with a little skill could take Jim’s stories and make a wonderful book; it rubs me the wrong way that she didn’t feel up to the task. I understand that not every writer is suited to every genre, but it felt like Anne was being self-deprecating rather than self-aware.
I also feel as though the Anne who has spent many years teaching and running schools and taking charge of her life and her finances would have gone a little stir crazy to suddenly find herself a housewife without her work or even community service to keep her busy (the Anne who was the driving force behind the Avonlea Village Improvement Society would have been disappointed). Every ambition she ever had seems to have been replaced by a desire to be a perfect wife and mother; it almost feels as though the death of her child would have been an even more crippling blow than it was in these circumstances, with all of her old ideals gone and just this one driving force to put her spirit behind. I’m glad the loss didn’t break her completely, but I have an uneasy feeling that it probably should have.
The Leslie Moore plot is really surprisingly dark as well. Leslie’s entire life has been trampled on by abuse, from the severe emotional manipulation her mother used to control her, to the complete bag-of-garbage human that was Dick Moore. Dick had a severely shady reputation that is never spoken of directly, but it is sharply implied that he severely hurt a woman over at the Glen; he threatens to take Leslie’s mothers house away and uses this blackmail to force her into marrying him. He was a violent and loud alcoholic and the world is better without him. There are several heartbreaking scenes where it is immediately clear that misogyny and abuse have damaged the development of Leslie’s entire personality. “‘Do you remember, Anne,’ said Leslie slowly, ‘that I once said—that night we met on the shore—that I hated my good looks? I did—then. It always seemed to me that if I had been homely Dick would never have thought of me.’”
Also, for a book about a pair of newlyweds, Gilbert is really surprisingly absent from the story. Which may be just as well, because I was really not a fan of the way he approached disagreements with Anne—he seems to have adopted a pattern of just telling Anne he is going to do something she won’t like and leaving it to her to apologize for getting upset. (Cases in point: the trephining surgery, moving to a new house). It doesn’t really seem to matter if he’s “right,” because he doesn’t even remotely listen to Anne’s side of the argument, but he is (irritatingly) always “right.” I would have been willing to through down with Gilbert and Captain Jim over the whole ‘women are too emotional to make rational decisions’ garbage when discussing the trephining surgery. It was admittedly a thorny moral quandary, but having things so dramatically play out in favor of Gilbert’s decision downplays the fact that there really WERE two very options and that Gilbert’s plan could have had catastrophic results not just for Leslie’s finances, but for her personal physical safety.
I don’t know how I feel about this one.
slow-paced
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
From all the books in the series that I have read so far, this is my favorite. It has very good characters, like Miss Cordelia, Leslie and Captain Jim, although I feel like Anne and Gilbert could have more presence.
The descriptions are lovely, as usual, but after watching the tv serie (Anne with an e) the books do not give the same messages and character development, and that hurts a lot.
The descriptions are lovely, as usual, but after watching the tv serie (Anne with an e) the books do not give the same messages and character development, and that hurts a lot.
[Re-read 2013]
Not my favorite of the series, but I do love the details of life near the sea, Anne's home and garden, and Captain Jim (except for his comments about women and logic).
I do feel a bit uneasy with the direction things take in terms of Anne's writing-- not that I don't appreciate and respect her desire to be a mother and a wife, but the way she almost belittles her own writing as "fanciful" and "for children" frustrates me. I wish very much she could have done both (it would be very interesting to compare this book with "Betsy's Wedding" by Maud Hart Lovelace, which also details the early married life of a young woman who has had aspirations of being a writer and also wants to be a wife and mother).
Not my favorite of the series, but I do love the details of life near the sea, Anne's home and garden, and Captain Jim (except for his comments about women and logic).
I do feel a bit uneasy with the direction things take in terms of Anne's writing-- not that I don't appreciate and respect her desire to be a mother and a wife, but the way she almost belittles her own writing as "fanciful" and "for children" frustrates me. I wish very much she could have done both (it would be very interesting to compare this book with "Betsy's Wedding" by Maud Hart Lovelace, which also details the early married life of a young woman who has had aspirations of being a writer and also wants to be a wife and mother).
