Anne of Green Gables - I have questions

[drspouse]

So, I'm listening to this on Sleepy Bookshelf.
I really like it, having not read it as a child, and I'm wondering:
Are all the others worth reading?
What order do they come in? The listed order doesn't seem to match up with the dates.
And very important:
What kind of currants went into the currant wine? Because I understood that blackcurrants were banned in North America. Or is that recent? Or are these redcurrants?

Oh I have found kindred spirits!

I remember the 1970s BBC Anne. It was okay. Loved the one with Megan Follows.

I rather like Windy Willows. Anyone know why it is changed from Poplars?

I think Poplars was its Canadian/American title and Willows was for the rest of the world.

Wikipedia says

Montgomery's original title for the book was Anne of Windy Willows, but her US publisher requested that she change the title because of the title's similarities to The Wind in the Willows. Additionally, her publisher requested some cuts to the book, mainly for perceived gory or terrifying content. Montgomery complied, and the edited novel was published in the United States and Canada as Anne of Windy Poplars. Her UK publisher, however, did not see the need for the edits and published the unabridged version under the original title, Anne of Windy Willows.[2][3]

perceived gory or terrifying content??

@Classica

Didn't the BBC erase that series? Apparently that was a thing they used to do!

Apparently they erased AOGG but some of Anne of Avonlea is on youtube. It's very 1970s children's drama dept, very theatrical in delivery and very poor production values. Would love to see the BBC do a new series of it, one would hope they would manage to stick to the original storyline.

I loved Jane of Lantern Hill as a pre-teen.

Jane lives in Toronto. She goes to PEI to visit her Father, who has split from her Mom.

Gory or terrifying content? In Windy Willows?

They can't mean the 'embarrassing' diaries can they? What else is there? Graveyard chat?

@LoveFall

I loved Jane of Lantern Hill as a pre-teen.

Jane lives in Toronto. She goes to PEI to visit her Father, who has split from her Mom.

It’s weirder than that, though. She’s been allowed to think her father is dead until she’s about ten, and her mother is under the thumb of Jane’s grandmother, who forces her to go out all the time and chooses all her clothes, and won’t let Jane’s mother show her any affection or even see very much of her, or stay at home from parties if Jane is ill. Then Jane falls for a picture of a journalist in a paper, discovers her father is alive and has sent for her, ends up discovering he’s the man from the paper and keeping house for him all summer on PEI, bustling about making bread and scrubbing floors, as if she’s pretending to be her mother, but a less wet version.

(I mean, I love it too, but it’s quite a weird novel!😀)

The only thing that immediately comes to mind was the tombstone of the man who wasn’t dead after all, and was used for rolling out pastry on.

I do remember thinking Gilbert in the BBC version (Christopher Blake) was rather wet. Jonathan Crombie in the Canadian one was perfect!

18:31SnakeLinguine

I'm re reading it right now and that summary of it is a travesty.

Oh dear. I can't unsee it now.

The bit about finding her father's picture didn't strike me as that off or odd though. She may have pre verbal unconscious memories, may see aspects of herself in his features... And she's pleased to keep house because it's the first time she's been allowed to do anything.

Paul Irving’s repeated “YOU KNOW, teacher!” might have driven me a bit nuts if I was Anne.

Paul Irving was such a sickly sweet child. He was supposed to be a male Anne but he had none of her charm and was just a simpering little git.

I didn't think so actually.

That's fine. Opinions differ.

@Choppingonions

18:31SnakeLinguine

I'm re reading it right now and that summary of it is a travesty.

Oh dear. I can't unsee it now.

The bit about finding her father's picture didn't strike me as that off or odd though. She may have pre verbal unconscious memories, may see aspects of herself in his features... And she's pleased to keep house because it's the first time she's been allowed to do anything.

Just different to yours, surely?

I agree it's quite an odd novel, though I also have a great affection for it -- there's always something fabulous about novels in which someone who has been oppressed and kept down discovers that they flourish in a different environment (as indeed many of LMM's are, like The Blue Castle, or the Anne books).

But I do think that LMM slightly eroticises (I imagine entirely unconsciously) the figure of Jane's father.

Besides the 'strange bond' she feels with the photograph which she takes home and hides in her handkerchief drawer because it's 'too beautiful to be talked about to anyone, even mother', they go off house-hunting like newly-weds and that whole 'enchanted' summer is a kind of honeymoon that is explicitly compared to when he'd done the same with Jane's mother -- there's that whole bit about Jane realising, as they unpack all his mother's dishes and quilts that have been packed up since her mother left him, 'that this was not the first time dad had helped fix up a home . . . not the first time he had been nicely excited over choosing wallpaper and curtains and rugs. He must have had it all before with mother. Perhaps they had had just as much fun over it as dad and she were having now . . .'

Besides Jane housekeeping for her father and doing a far better job than her 'pretty and silly' mother did, there's the way Jane gets into a weird, bitchy rivalry with Aunt Irene over who knows her father's tastes best and cooks the best version of his favourite cake, and her father telling her in how he thought her mother was like Helen of Troy when they met, and how her eyelashes did things to him she wouldn't believe, and how he wanted to kiss the hem of her dress, and read out their love letters to their adolescent daughter Who is both a kind of wife substitute, only much cannier, more domestically-talented and able to withstand aunt Irene, and the one who ends up reuniting her parents.

I don't think this destroys my pleasure in it. Though I do find the character of Jane's mother disturbing. Obviously she's a puppet to her possessive mother, but given that her mother absolutely loathes Robin's child and won't even allow her to spend time with her or be affectionate to her, it's difficult to quite forgive a woman who connives in that for a decade when by selling some of her diamonds, she could presumably have managed some form of independent life for her and Jane.

@Classica

Paul Irving was such a sickly sweet child. He was supposed to be a male Anne but he had none of her charm and was just a simpering little git.

He did simper a bit. Maybe it was primarily that the child Anne, for all her fantasies, was also a gritty little survivor who used her imagination to survive in a hostile world before she came to Green Gables whereas he and his Rock People just feel a lot more fey.

Not a fan of Little Elizabeth in Anne of Windy Willows either -- I like Katharine Brooke in that one, of all the minor characters.

Oddly enough, I don't remember some of those more weird parts of Jane of Lantern Hill.

My own Dad was very strict really, and had high expectations of us. A bit too strict and too high. But I always found him great to talk to about school and world events etc. As we both grew older he was my go to for discussing complex things about work. We just connected that way.

I think my memories of the book take me to a place where I was happy for Jane that she was getting her Father back. I was probably too innocent and naive to see anything else.

bloodyforeland I do see what you mean. But isn't a lot of that preparation by the author for the reconciliation between Jane's parents? I agree she shouldn't have to come to these insights (and this is briefly acknowledged in a phrase about an agony no child should have to suffer) but isn't it just part of Jane realising her parents' back story and seeing how it could work again for them? She's able to see her parents' faults, even that her mother suffers from learned helplessness (or lacks the slightest bit of backbone) and her father is at his spoilt worst with his sister. She just loves them anyway aka the parent trap, I thought. If there was a different way to get that information into the story (about her father's love of her mother) I expect the author would have taken it but there wasn't much leeway in how the novel was structured.

Did anyone else love the character of Aunt Becky in the tangled web? So delightfully narcissistic.

@Classica

Paul Irving was such a sickly sweet child. He was supposed to be a male Anne but he had none of her charm and was just a simpering little git.

I agree! Couldn’t stand him. So wet you could wring him out.

Was also totally bored by Capt Jim.

I don't understand why you'd read books with characters you despise. The world is crammed with stories-why not read the ones you love.

I don't understand why you'd read a thread with opinions you despise. MN world is crammed with threads -why not read the ones you love.

@BloodyForeland, yes I like I like Katherine Brooke too. Loved her portrayal in the mini-series too. They got her just right, brittle and sarcastic with some humour peeking through. And then of course she goes to Green Gables and flourishes, which is quite heart warming.

And I've always agreed with Anne that Catherine with a C looks smug.

@JaninaDuszejko

My copies have Kim Braden from the 1970s BBC version which apparently is the only faithful dramatization of 'Anne of the Island'.

Ah I'm feeling so nostalgic. I had these copies. I loved the Anne books and shed lots of tears over the later ones. I lasted about 10 mins of Anne With An E then gave up. The Megan Follows' series was the best.

My copies are green hardback and belonged to my mum. When I was little, I thought that mummies only read green hardbacks. I had no idea she was working her way through the entire L.M. Montgomery catalogue! It must have been a comforting thing to do at the end of the day.

K Brooke was brilliant in the 80s series.

I haven't despised any posts here but then it's a much smaller time commitment to reading a book so not onerous. I would characterise no one here as a git. I dislike characters, find them poorly drawn at times and feel happy to say so but I dislike the startling vitriol towards characters that erupts on threads like these sometimes. It wouldn't occur to me to describe a child as a simpering git, real or fictional, or to finish a book with a central character who was very dull. It seems a pointless exercise and the most uninteresting way to talk about any book. But most of the posts have been very different.

@Choppingonions

I don't understand why you'd read books with characters you despise. The world is crammed with stories-why not read the ones you love.

haven’t you ever read a book with a character you are meant to dislike?

Authors are human. Readers are human. Humans have different opinions. We do not share a hive mind. Not liking a character is perfectly fine.

[quote Classica]@BloodyForeland, yes I like I like Katherine Brooke too. Loved her portrayal in the mini-series too. They got her just right, brittle and sarcastic with some humour peeking through. And then of course she goes to Green Gables and flourishes, which is quite heart warming.

And I've always agreed with Anne that Catherine with a C looks smug.[/quote]
She is a brilliant character.

Last night I remembered that Anne gave her a “chessy cat”, which had always confused me. So I googled it, and discovered it’s short for Cheshire, as in Alice in Wonderland!