Some of my favorite episodes in this book:

In a way, this was VERY smart of her – because it kept the interest going for new generations. Anne and Gilbert are the only married couple that we really follow through their marriage, we see from the inside out, and Lucy Maud turns her focus onto the kids, rather than onto the grown-ups. I’m not saying there’s anything bad with that – it just becomes noticeable as a theme. Leslie Moore is tragic and interesting (excerpt from Anne’s House of Dreams here) – and then she gets married and we never hear of her again. Or – not even strife – how ’bout an ARGUMENT? How ’bout a little reality? Lucy Maud’s marriage was so bad and so … shameful to her (mental illness being so stigmatized) that she never really wrote about marriage – I think it was too hot to go near. This is really the only hint we ever get that Anne and Gilbert ever have marital strife.

Anne is in the book, as herself, with her point of view, in the beginning, and intermittently throughout – and then there’s a huge brou-haha that takes up the end of the book – where Anne feels that Gilbert is neglecting her, and then she becomes convinced that Gilbert still pines for his college girlfriend Christine. Because … where is Anne? What’s going on with HER? But as an adult, it seems right. I admit that when I was a teenager, reading the books for the first time, I got kind of frustrated. We see Anne and Gilbert, characters we now love and feel we know, through their kids eyes – as parents. So we’re inside Jem’s head, or Walter’s head, or whatever. Each child has his or her own big episode in the book – and the narrative is told from that child’s point of view. There’s a moment when Anne sees a shadow of a cross over her son Walter’s bed – and “later she would look back on that ….” etc.Īnne of Ingleside is the story of Anne and Gilbert raising their brood of children. There are a couple of foreshadowing moments in this book – because, after all, she has already written Rilla of Ingleside (excerpt here) – so she knows what happens. Anne of Ingleside was published in 1939 – which always amazes me. Sixth in the Anne series – but I think this was one of the last books she wrote. Next book on the shelf is Anne of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, No.

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery