Review: Emily's Quest

The first two books of the Emily trilogy are very good. The last one, on the other hand...

Emily's Quest is the third book in L. M. Montgomery's trilogy about Emily of New Moon. It was first published in 1927.

Emily and her friends are now grown up. Emily stays at New Moon and writes more books, Teddy goes off to study art, Ilse and Perry go... somewhere (I really didn't like either of them in this book, so I didn't pay much attention to their scenes), and Dean Priest is still hanging around Emily. She falls in love with Teddy, but his apparent disinterest -- and an unfortunate accident -- leads to her becoming engaged to Dean. After she supernaturally saves Teddy's life (it's a long story) Emily breaks off her engagement and dedicates her time to writing while angsting over Teddy. And the charm of the first two novels is conspicuous by its absence.

Compared to L. M. Montgomery's other works, this book feels very unfinished. It reads less like a novel and more like a collection of scene outlines. Montgomery, usually an excellent and descriptive writer, plunges headlong into telling instead of showing, and it doesn't work too well.

Ilse, who started out a likable character, has now become a shallow, flighty brat who makes me want to break a slate over her head. Among other things, she gets engaged to a man she doesn't love, then abandons him literally minutes before the wedding to go and declare her love for the man she's mocked and derided for years.

Teddy never had much personality. Here he might as well be a piece of cardboard. And his mother is an absolute lunatic. We're supposed to feel sorry for her when she reveals her past. But that past includes poisoning her husband's dog and emotionally abusing her son for years, including keeping letters from him out of jealousy. I didn't shed any tears when Mrs. Kent finally dies. If only she'd died earlier. In the first book, for instance!

Perry made so little impression on me that I can't remember a single thing about him beyond his marriage to Ilse. Same goes for all Emily's other suitors -- except Dean, who's even more creepy than before. Any sympathy I felt for him disappeared the minute he admitted to lying about Emily's book.

Emily herself has become the Edwardian equivalent of an emo teen. Mopes around the house, angsts constantly, spends all her time feeling sorry for herself... What happened to the Emily of the first two books, who had some moments of depression but didn't spend an entire book going "woe is me"?

At least Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy are still recognisable. They provide some of the book's scarce comedy when they read the reviews of Emily's book. Cousin Jimmy's (paraphrased) line "I know what those words mean separately, but put together they don't make any sense" perfectly sums up many "professional" book reviews 😄

Even the writing is more choppy and vague than L. M. Montgomery's usually is. Reading it I get the feeling that for some reason she didn't have time to revise and edit it, and sent the publisher a first or second draft. It's still miles better than my first drafts, but nowhere near the quality of her other works.

Overall this book is a disappointment, and not a satisfactory end to the series 😔

Is it available online?: Yes, on Gutenberg.

Rating: 4/10.

Review: Emily Climbs

This review was sitting in drafts for days, ready to be posted today... And planning my Camp NaNo July project is taking so much of my time that I almost forgot about it. Oops.

Emily Climbs is the second in the Emily of New Moon trilogy. If the first book was the more cynical equivalent of Anne of Green Gables, then this one is the more cynical equivalent of Anne of the Island.

Emily and her friends go off to high school, but Aunt Elizabeth only allows her to go on one condition: she must agree never to write fiction while she's there. Anyone who was born with the urge to write will understand how difficult it is for Emily to obey this order. Nor do some people around her make her time at high school any easier. She has to stay with Aunt Ruth, a woman so stubborn and unsympathetic she makes Aunt Elizabeth look jolly. And she constantly clashes with Evelyn, one of her schoolmates. Aunt Ruth improves later on (wonder of wonders!). Evelyn doesn't. And along the way Emily has a series of adventures that are decidedly more eerie than anything Anne encountered.

The incident of Emily being locked in the church with a madman wouldn't be out of place in a horror novel. Nor would Mrs. Kent. That woman gives me the chills 😨 And then there's the case of the missing child, a tragedy that's averted thanks to Emily's "flash" -- something that is even more frightening here than in the first book. All this is topped off with a more mundane but infuriatingly unjust incident: Emily and her friends are embroiled in a completely fictional scandal, and Emily is shunned because of it.

Still, the book has some humour. Large portions of it are from Emily's diary, and she makes no bones about what she thinks of certain people. Then there's the incident of the overturned ink-bottle, something that anyone who's spilled something messy can relate to. And the question of who owns a certain troublesome dog is the funniest part of the book.

I enjoyed this book even more than the first one, and I definitely recommend it!

Is it available online?: Yes, on Gutenberg.

Rating: 10/10.

Review: Emily of New Moon (novel)

I once heard someone describe this book as "Gothic Anne of Green Gables". That isn't the best description of it, but it's partly accurate.

Emily of New Moon is one of L. M. Montgomery's many novels, and the first in a trilogy. It was published in 1923. It's been adapted into a TV series and an anime.

The story has many similarities to Anne of Green Gables. An orphan girl goes to live in a farm on Prince Edward Island, befriends a boy and a girl there, and dreams of becoming a writer. But at the same time it's thematically quite different. Emily has a more eerie, less idealistic atmosphere. At times when I was reading I wondered if L. M. Montgomery looked at Anne, thought "How can I use this plot without telling the same story?", and invented Emily.

Unlike Anne, Emily occasionally includes the supernatural. Anne's encounters with the supernatural, in the form of ghosts and fairies, were always imagined (even if they didn't always seem that way to her!). Emily, on the other hand, experiences something she calls "the flash", which is clearly described as a glimpse into another world, and in the rather spine-chilling conclusion to a subplot she actually witnesses events she never saw or heard about.

Some of the characters are very likeable; Emily herself, Cousin Jimmy, and Aunt Laura stand out. Then there are some who are sometimes likeable and sometimes not; Ilse, Teddy, and Aunt Elizabeth fall into this category. And then there are the utterly unlikeable ones, of whom the deranged and terrifying Mrs. Kent reigns supreme. This woman is supposed to be pitiable, but I found her utterly repulsive. She's so possessive and controlling of her son that she kills his pets when she thinks he loves them more than her!

Nor is the offscreen pet-killing the only dark moment in this book. There's also a woman who's believed to have abandoned her husband and child to run away with her cousin. (She didn't, as Emily learns in her measles-induced "dream" or whatever that thing was.) And then there's Dean Priest. He isn't the evil creep some modern readers think, but he's certainly unsettling.

There are occasional moments of humour in the book, though not as many as in Anne. There's the incident of Emily's visit to Father Cassidy, and Emily's comments about certain things and people in her diary. But overall the book is much more depressing than I expected an L. M. Montgomery novel to be. I still enjoyed reading it, though, and -- wonder of wonders! -- in some ways I like it better than Anne.

Is it available online?: Yes, on Gutenberg.

Rating: 9/10.