Take a photo of a barcode or cover
amaryah_cannon 's review for:
Anne of the Island
by L.M. Montgomery
"Friends! Your friendship can't satisfy me Anne!"
I take back what I said in my review of Anne of Avonlea. I think THIS is my favorite Anne book. I've read it once before but it was so long ago and I really didn't remember much of it except that this was the book where Anne and Gilbert finally come together. I loved that part of it again, of course, but there was also something else special about this book. I feel like Anne grows and changes so much in this book (in a good way), it feels more like a coming of age story than the first two.
I love the friends she has at Redmond, especially Phil, and I love the time they spend at Patty's Place. Each of her failed proposals make me laugh as they sort of burst her bubble of the ideal romance, but each of those experiences ultimately help her to realize her love for Gilbert. In this book she visits the home she was born in, and she reads the love letters of her parents and feels that for the first time she is not an orphan.
But, the most beautiful, and to me most important, chapter in the book is when Anne has her last conversation with Ruby Gillis. Their talk about death and heaven, and Ruby's fear that it will be so different from what she is used to, was one of the best things I have read in a long time. Anne's realization that Ruby has in a sense wasted her talents is so moving. "There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable." Anne's thoughts on heaven as she tries to comfort Ruby are so real and beautiful, "I believe we'll just go on living, a good deal as we live here--and be ourselves just the same--only it will be easier to be good and to--follow the highest. All the hinderances and perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly."
I'm so glad I decided to read these books again. The simplicity of the life and times, and feeling like I'm learning these lessons all over again as Anne learns them for the first time has been so sweet.
I take back what I said in my review of Anne of Avonlea. I think THIS is my favorite Anne book. I've read it once before but it was so long ago and I really didn't remember much of it except that this was the book where Anne and Gilbert finally come together. I loved that part of it again, of course, but there was also something else special about this book. I feel like Anne grows and changes so much in this book (in a good way), it feels more like a coming of age story than the first two.
I love the friends she has at Redmond, especially Phil, and I love the time they spend at Patty's Place. Each of her failed proposals make me laugh as they sort of burst her bubble of the ideal romance, but each of those experiences ultimately help her to realize her love for Gilbert. In this book she visits the home she was born in, and she reads the love letters of her parents and feels that for the first time she is not an orphan.
But, the most beautiful, and to me most important, chapter in the book is when Anne has her last conversation with Ruby Gillis. Their talk about death and heaven, and Ruby's fear that it will be so different from what she is used to, was one of the best things I have read in a long time. Anne's realization that Ruby has in a sense wasted her talents is so moving. "There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable." Anne's thoughts on heaven as she tries to comfort Ruby are so real and beautiful, "I believe we'll just go on living, a good deal as we live here--and be ourselves just the same--only it will be easier to be good and to--follow the highest. All the hinderances and perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly."
I'm so glad I decided to read these books again. The simplicity of the life and times, and feeling like I'm learning these lessons all over again as Anne learns them for the first time has been so sweet.