The ghostliest Anne book yet

This chronicle in the Anne series has a special memory for me: I read it for the first time when on my trip to see my grandma in California back in 1994. I read this book twice on that trip, in fact. I remember chatting with my seatmate about it on the plane back. And so when I read this book, I am transported every time to that summer in 1994. It’s a haunted book, which makes sense, as Montgomery peoples her book with ghosts of love, desire, and death.

Anne has graduated from Redmond, and she is engaged to be married. You know who it is, obviously. While her fiancé is finishing his higher education, she embarks on a new venture—a principalship at Summerside High School. This book focuses on the new characters—the Pringle Clan, Sophy Sinclair, Rebecca Dew and The Widows, Miss Minerva Tomgallon, and Katherine Brooke. But the sweetest and most fairyish is the winsome and pale Elizabeth Greyson. Elizabeth is a sprite of a child, subsisting on dreams and the hope that her father will rescue her from her dour great-grandmother. As far as children go, Elizabeth is the finest that Montgomery has ever written, in my opinion. The story is told in anecdotes and letters from Anne to her fiancé as she finishes out her teaching career.

While this story does not break out of Montgomery’s usual writing mold, it is still deeply delightful and winsome to read. The characters are engaging and unusual, and Anne herself finds depths of strength as an independent adult building dreams of starting her own family and developing her writing career.

Cross-posted to my blog.