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A review by oftheglade
Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery
2.75
This book is very much the ‘through the looking glass darkly’ version of Anne of Green Gables. I saw in another review someone saying that this is the realistic version of what would’ve happened to Anne, not the optimistic one and I think I’d agree.
The Anne books are full of heart ache, and grief, and childish mistakes and difficult decisions but at the end of the day, the undercurrent is always one of love and hope and finding acceptance. Emily has none of that, and most of the time I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her from literally everyone apart from her three friends and Jimmy. Elizabeth is cruel to a grieving child, Laura is sweet but never stands up for her, her dead father is spoken ill of repeatedly, her dead mother is never mentioned, she is literally groomed by an adult, and her dreams and interests are shunned at every turn by the adults who are meant to be looking after her.
Emily literally ends this book “a little taller, a little thinner, a little less childlike, with great, grey shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a buried thing and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive remembrance of that world behind the veil” which I think sums this book up.
I’m not sure that I’ll bother to get the next two despite my love for LM Montgomery’s writing and my love of Emily herself. I feel… weird and disillusioned after reading this, and I wonder if the chronological timeline of this book in LM Montgomery’s life makes it a reflection of her own disillusionment with life too?
The Anne books are full of heart ache, and grief, and childish mistakes and difficult decisions but at the end of the day, the undercurrent is always one of love and hope and finding acceptance. Emily has none of that, and most of the time I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her from literally everyone apart from her three friends and Jimmy. Elizabeth is cruel to a grieving child, Laura is sweet but never stands up for her, her dead father is spoken ill of repeatedly, her dead mother is never mentioned, she is literally groomed by an adult, and her dreams and interests are shunned at every turn by the adults who are meant to be looking after her.
Emily literally ends this book “a little taller, a little thinner, a little less childlike, with great, grey shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a buried thing and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive remembrance of that world behind the veil” which I think sums this book up.
I’m not sure that I’ll bother to get the next two despite my love for LM Montgomery’s writing and my love of Emily herself. I feel… weird and disillusioned after reading this, and I wonder if the chronological timeline of this book in LM Montgomery’s life makes it a reflection of her own disillusionment with life too?