- Revising childhood favorites this year – and I’d forgotten how much I love this series.
- Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson
Summary from GoodReads:
Anne Shirley has come a long way since her days as a mischievous orphan living in the house at Green Gables. She is now eighteen and headed to faraway Redmond College in Kingsport. Anne’s college years are sure to be full of fun, but they will also be a time for soul-searching and big decisions. When her longtime friend Gilbert Blythe proposes marriage, Anne feels they can never be more than friends. But is her new admirer, the handsome and wealthy Roy Gardner, really the man of her dreams?
My Review:
This is my favorite book of the Anne of Green Gables series (well, one of two favorites). The story held in the pages of Anne of the Island is one filled with the growing pains of youth, the losing of dreams, replaced by the gaining of new dreams, the making of new friends, saying goodbye to old and life continuing it’s everlasting journey of passing us by.
Although the times were different, much of what L.M. Montgomery wrote of Anne’s experience at college is still the same today. It’s a time for discovering yourself, of getting to know who you are. And for Anne, who’s mind is “constantly changing” so she’s having to “reacquaint herself” with it (one of my favorite quotes in the book), college is everything I remember it being for me as well.
I think one of the reasons I love Anne so much is because she has such a perfect, wonderful appreciation for home. Sure, she sees it through rose-tinted glasses, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think we all long to have that place in our minds, that home filled with memories and the ghosts of our youth. Remembering mine helps to steady me when things get rough, but also has such a bittersweet taste to it – and that’s what Anne of the Island captures so well.
Ruby Gillis, Gilbert Blythe, Patty’s Place, Diana (Barry) Wright, the births of new characters, the deaths of some old favorites, all happen in this story and it’s very much a turning point. The ending of something special and the beginning of something new and exciting.
