'Pollyanna's Door to Happiness' by Elizabeth Borton

MY THOUGHTS:  

It's a pleasure to get back to the Pollyanna books after a break of several months. 

This time Jimmy sets off for a year on an engineering job where Pollyanna and the kids can't follow. He's an eleventh hour team member joining a high-profile expedition to the South Pole. I must say, he breaks the news to his wife in a tactless, un-Jimmylike way, along these lines. 'Chance of a lifetime... make or break career opportunity... but if you say the word, Pollyanna, I'll turn it down right now.' What does he expect her to do?

Alas, Pollyanna is true to character. Remember in Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms when she didn't tell Jimmy she was pregnant before he shipped off to the war? This time she hides info she's just discovered that their bank has gone broke. Jimmy assumes his family will live off his savings. It seems strange that he wouldn't check such a vital detail, even with just a day's notice, but oh well, whatever. 

The upshot is that Pollyanna joins the jobseekers in Boston. A lot of her desperation makes no sense in the context of the whole series. Why look for modest rooms to rent, instead of staying with Aunt Ruth and Uncle John, who are loaded with dough? Even if the older couple are away on one of his research trips, isn't that all the more reason why their close family members should move into that beautiful mansion? But John and Ruth don't even get a mention in this story. Again, oh well, whatever. 

Pollyanna ends up as the non-professional assistant of Dr Bennet, a psychiatrist. Her job will be regular chit chat with several selected patients to work her Glad Game magic on them. It sounds dodgy to readers in our era, for somebody with no training whatsoever in the mental health sector to be hired for such a responsibility, but this was the 1930s. Dr Bennet even sets her up in an apartment conducive to entertaining. In other words, Pollyanna will be getting paid for being herself.

At first I facepalmed, for Dr Bennet is doing the very thing Aunt Polly dreaded during Pollyanna's childhood; that is making Pollyanna feel self-conscious and put on the spot. Surely monetizing Pollyanna's gift will take away her beloved spontaneity, especially now that she has to write up formal reports on her new 'friends.' I expected it to destroy the whole spirit of the series, but somehow it works! 

Pollyanna has a humble, caring attitude, holds the doctor's trust seriously, and the job takes a great toll on her. The patients themselves are an interesting bunch. There's a novelist, Rada Masters, who has a complex that people are stealing from her. Deborah Dangerfield is a poor little rich teenager who keeps running away from home, and bereft Mrs Garden keeps shoplifting baby clothes without even realizing. Then there's poor Mr Bagley, a transport company director whose wife and son both die in separate accidents on his vehicles! No wonder Pollyanna gets a bit burned out. 

She has some wise insights about how the human mind works, after all her years of fascination with people.

Pollyanna reflects:

 'Curbed and exercised for our entertainment, the imagination gives us pure happiness. Running wild though, and substituting itself and its manufactured dreams for reality... it plunges us into problems, despair, mental troubles. It's a thing like fire; capable of infinite good and comfort if harnessed and guided and understood, and capable of injuring us in uncounted ways if we permit it to rule us.' 

And again:

'Sometimes we think strange things. They are like little sores on our minds, like measles or chicken pox. We get over them. They aren't natural things... don't last forever.'

Pollyanna's children are 13, 10 and 7, which is a few years younger than they were said to be in the previous book (Pollyanna's Castle in Mexico)! Elizabeth Borton messes up her own timeline, but the kids ring more true at these younger ages. Junior acquires a part time job, helping a newspaper office with his photography skills, and grapples with his own conscience crisis of whether or not it's ethical to throw in his lot with the snoopy paparazzi. Delicate Judy aspires to be a professional dancer. At this stage I wonder whether sturdy Ruth, the plain little plodder, will blossom out and eclipse her talented brother and sister in some remarkable way. Time will tell.

Here's a funny speculation. When Ruth assumes her daddy will be working close to Santa Claus, Junior and Judy exchange amused glances because she still believes in Santa Claus, yet neither seem to twig that she's chosen the wrong polar region. Since Elizabeth Borton has got so many other things wrong within her own stories, I can't help wondering if she realised it herself.   

Overall, I enjoyed this far more than Elizabeth Borton's two previous Glad Books, in which she went off the rails, turning the stories into sensationalist adverts for their lavish settings. There's been some much-needed course correction here, and she's finally writing more in the initial spirit of Eleanor H. Porter and Harriet Lummis Smith. This book takes place in a normal city suburb with several people walking around beneath black clouds of depression and despair which Pollyanna helps them clear. Hooray, that's all we really want from a Pollyanna book. It's formulaic maybe, yet not predictable, because there is so much scope.  

🌟🌟🌟½  

Next up will be Pollyanna's Golden Horsehoe (the last of Elizabeth Borton's offerings, whew!)

'The Secret Adversary' by Agatha Christie

Tommy Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley are young, in love… and flat broke. Just after Great War, there are few jobs available and the couple are desperately short of money. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd.—"willing to do anything, go anywhere."

MY THOUGHTS: 

We are introduced to young job-seekers Tommy and Tuppence, the only Christie characters destined to age through the decades in real time alongside their author. In this debut they are babes in their early twenties, broke and anxious for work. The year is 1920. Tuppence Cowley possesses elfin charm and oodles of self confidence and energy. Tommy Beresford is a 'pleasantly ugly' young ginger who prides himself on his common sense. Friends since childhood, they agree to start a new business venture named 'The Young Adventurers', in which they'll hire themselves out to anyone who needs them.

An eavesdropper soon plunges the pair deep into espionage and danger. These kids must think on their feet and rely on their wits more than they'd ever expected. (So one moral is don't start a business unless you're certain you can deliver on your hype.) 

Tommy and Tuppence find themselves embroiled in the search for Jane Finn, a young passenger aboard the sinking Lusitania in 1915, who was entrusted with some vital documents as she boarded a lifeboat. Neither Jane nor the precious, inflammatory papers have been seen for five years and foul play is suspected. 

Hot on the trail of the two Ts, who are hot on Jane's trail, is the titular secret adversary, a criminal mastermind who goes by the modest alias, 'Mr Brown.' This slick crook is renowned for popping up in unexpected places, posing as a nonentity. But although others know his methodology in retrospect, nobody has caught him at it. Can the formidable Mr Brown be foiled by a couple of green youths like Tuppence and Tommy?  

One intelligence agent tells them, 'My experts, working in stereotypical ways, have failed. You will bring imagination and an open mind to the task.' Perhaps the enjoyment of this novel hinges on the willingness of us readers to accept that reasoning for involving total noobs. 

If we are happy to swallow that premise, it's a fun read! The story sets us on edge, looking for Mr Brown in the unlikeliest places. Breakthroughs sometimes rely on the slightest details and surprises follow on the tail of each other. And perhaps because Christie isn't a deft hand at writing romance, the romantic snippets are sort of awkward and endearing.

The story takes place only five years after the disaster it draws from; the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania by a German submarine during WW1. I guess Agatha Christie joins the ranks of opportunistic fiction authors who profit from still raw grief, for over 1000 passengers were drowned in this tragedy. But hey, Covid pandemic novels started hitting our shelves barely three years after 2020, so story fodder is still being left to the discretion of writers and publishers. 

Although this story is not totally flawess, relying heavily on coincidences a few too many times, I think it still deserves full marks for its wonderful twists and subtle clues, especially considering Christie was still quite young and this was just her second novel. She was excellent at anticipating not only my initial suspicions but even my subsequent guesses when I thought I was being smart. 

One thing that puzzles me is why characters such as Tommy initially find the name 'Jane Finn' so outlandish and remarkable. It strikes me as quite a fine and run-of-the-mill name. Would you pause in amazement if you heard some stranger refer to 'Jane Finn'? I wouldn't. If I was able to step into the pages, I'd ask him why he found it so odd.

As for Jane herself, wow, what a memorable character. Talk about taking a trust seriously on behalf of her country. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟  

'Romancing Mark Twain' novels by E. E. Burke

I'm surely not the only reader who finds Mark Twain's famous boy duo lingers in our imaginations long after we finish the books. He wrote two very different classics about two equally divergent boys. It has become easy for Twain fans to ask others if they'd choose 'Team Tom' or 'Team Huck.' The only thing these two characters have in common is that they greatly admire each other. 

Tom is a power personality while Huck is a peacemaker.

Tom is choleric, while Huck, I think, slides into phlegmatic.

Tom crams his head with fancy and folklore to arguably unhealthy levels, while Huck tends to be more practical and hands-on, which, I think gives him the survival edge the poor kid needs.  

Tom revels in being the centre of attention while Huck shuns the spotlight. 

Tom is a controller while Huck hates making waves. 

While searching for any fan fiction, I was delighted to stumble across these two books in my scrolling. E.E. Burke has written two bona fide romances about Tom and Huck as adults - the perfect indulgence to feature for Valentine's Day. Kudoes to her! I enjoyed them both immensely. And it's fitting that just as Mark Twain's own two books about this duo differ markedly from each other, so do Burke's. 

Check out my initial reviews of Tom and Huck. 

Now for what I dare to call these sexy spin-offs :) 

Tom Sawyer Returns

This novel embroils some of our favourite characters in Civil War espionage.

We readers are probably all sentimental enough to imagine Becky and Tom end up tying the knot, even though as tweenies they infuriate and offend each other quite as often as they are friends.

Becky Thatcher has grown into an attractive but deeply troubled young woman, whose father has been accused of treason; namely printing and distributing seditious propaganda. And her cousin, Jeff, although dearly loved, has placed his uncle, the judge, in some hot water. 

Tom Sawyer is the sudden arrival Becky never expected to see again. He's a spy who gets knocked unconscious as he heads straight for the Thatchers' house. Tom knows he was sent there for a reason, but partial amnesia has obscured whatever it was. With his attraction to Becky rekindled, he fears it won't be anything that will endear him to her. Especially since his cryptic orders were, 'Bring in the evidence you were sent to collect against Judge Thatcher.' Is it possible Tom could be involved in an evil mission and not even remember it? 

This story brings out a pleasing vulnerability in Tom which Twain never really taps into. Yet I can fully believe that with Tom's orphan background, it always existed. Another thing I love is how Tom's secret agent duties prevent him from boasting about his own heroism in the old way. Enforced modesty must almost kill this famous show-off. 

Becky fights her love for the unwelcome Tom, especially now that she's engaged to his old rival, none other than the smug and dapper Alfred Temple. Alongside the main couple, I love the reappearance of other familiar faces from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Intervening years have turned Alfred into a man whose motivation Mark Twain surely never foresaw, yet I'm willing to bet he'd be a big fan of the direction in which Burke takes Alfred in this story. Then there's Amy Lawrence, a dour and reclusive young woman who now resents Becky for another reason than her sway over Tom's fickle affection. 

A couple of faces I missed were Joe Harper and Aunt Polly, although I can see there was no place for them in this tightly woven plot. (It's easy to assume Aunt Polly must have passed away.)

I think most of all, I love how E. E. Burke has developed the character of young Sid. Far more than Tom's insipid, goody-goody, tell-tale little brother, he is now the youngest ever appointed Provost Marshall, or head of local police. Sid is shown to have an intriguing inner life of his own. It's a hard pill for Tom to swallow to accede to Sid, whether or not he can figure out if he's even trustworthy. 

There is plenty of action which proves lethal for some and a close shave for others. Some sneaky disguises are also in order, some on the spur of the moment. A very clever book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Taming Huck Finn

A romance featuring a disgruntled and heart-torn Huckleberry Finn that takes place largely on an old paddle steamer. Yes please! 

The story begins at Atchison, Kansas. Huck Finn, having recuperated from a serious gunshot wound, is almost ready to seek work as a steamboat pilot for which he's been trained. There, he receives a bombshell in the form of a lawyer accompanied by a friendly little boy. Huck's one-time guardian, Widow Douglas, has passed away and left custody of her only grandson to him. While he's still reeling from this news, an intense and bitter young woman shows up. Hallie MacBride wants to claim her nephew, who is her only remaining family member. 

This spurs one of Huck's famous conscience issues. Although he considers himself an unfit guardian for a child, bad memories of his personal experience with Miss Watson drive him to look out for young Tad. He wouldn't forgive himself for leaving an impressionable and lively young lad with another sour spinster - which is his initial impression of Hallie. Huck has no idea that a deeply hurtful experience has branded its mark on her soul. 

For her part, Hallie never anticipates how disarming and irresistible she'll find her infuriating adversary.

And for the record, young Tad badly wants to stay with Huck. He seems by far the cooler option for an eight-year-old. 

There's a lot of fascinating detail about the major responsibilities of a riverboat pilot, including subtle peril spotting in the water and interpretation of other signs, such as wind direction. These days are long before motor cars, so steamboat pilots were really the only drivers as we know them. I didn't miss the nice little Easter egg that Huck started learning his skill under an old pilot named Samuel Clemens. 

The chemistry between Hallie and Huck is sizzling hot, and a formidable enemy posing as a friend raises the danger stakes sky high. My only misgiving at the very outset was scepticism that Widow Douglas would assign guardianship of her precious grandson to Huck without ever telling him beforehand. But before long the convincing storyline won me over. I'm willing to believe that desperation and fond nostalgia made her do it. 

And what a swoon-worthy ending, as our heroine Hallie might say herself.   

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Oh, by the way, do you consider yourself to belong in Team Tom or Team Huck?      

'Nothing Else but Miracles' by Kate Albus

From the author of A Place to Hang the Moon comes a hopeful World War II story about three scrappy siblings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

This is one of the several WW2 themed novels I plan to read this year. I'm glad the springboard is such a delightful, whimsical read. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

Like almost every other reviewer, I was a great fan of Kate Albus' first novel, A Place to Hang the Moon. I was anxious to read this second story ever since I found out it was another WW2 tale about kids on the home front, but set in New York instead of England. 

 I love this survival story about the three Byrne siblings with their marine-themed names. Dory's father is off fighting somewhere in France. Her brother Fish is technically too young to be in charge of Dory and little Pike, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Their section of New York City's Lower Eastside is quite snug and Mr. Byrne is confident that the neighborhood will provide his children with what they need. This stroke of optimism intrigued me from the get-go, since we so often hear the opposite, that you need to watch your back in impersonal and dangerous big cities. Paired with the title and the middle-school target audience, I anticipated a treat.

Of course sudden strokes of misfortune are part of war and storytelling alike. Mr. Reedy, the diabolical new landlord of their apartment block, heckles the trio with threats of an orphanage, at least for the younger two. That's when Dory and the boys sneak off to squat in an old ghost-hotel that's been boarded up for over half a century.

I wish this book had been in print back when I was homeschooling my kids. There is a treasure-trove of leads to follow up, including ethnic food from delis and cafes to find recipes for, and wonderful nostalgic old 1940s music to listen to.

However it's worth mentioning that some other reviewers including homeschooling parents panned the story because of mischievous Dory's flagrant disobedience. She flouts the authority of her brother and teachers whenever it suits her, which according to some readers gives a dubious message that misbehavior pays off.

 While I see their point, they may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cool flip side of their opinion is that sometimes going our own way, shrugging off conventional caution and pushing through fear may yield astounding rewards. There are times when sneakiness and boldness are required for original thinkers. Rather than being the naughty girl some people call her, Dory Byrne may, in fact, possess the germ of an entrepreneurial spirit. Dare I say that in this respect, she's an excellent example for kids.

I'm possibly biased to love this book, because Fish, Dory and Pike are an almost perfect gender, age and character match for my three children, who are now grown up. I've seen many interactions like the Byrne kids' play out for real in my own household. My older son treated his little brother with the same sort of tender sweetness Fish shows Pike, while their sister in the middle was more inclined to be blunt, practical and adventurous. That's another reason why I wish we had this during their childhood.

What more can I say? I love the comfort Dory takes on board from the strength and character she sees on the face of the Statue of Liberty. And as for a certain diamond, some call it an annoying red herring but I think it's a good twist; true to life and unpredictable.

Yes, I'd add this to my pile of warm and cosy reads. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 

'The Good Earth' by Pearl S Buck

I've decided to work my way through a small stack of Pulitzer Prizewinning novels I've picked up here and there, before I realised what they share in common. This one was from a small, jam-packed secondhand bookshop near the sea at Port Eliot. I already knew, from a list I'd printed off, that it was the bestselling and Pulitzer winning fiction title the year my Dad was born. I knew it would be worth the few dollars I paid, regardless of what I thought of the story. 

MY THOUGHTS:  

This book was the bestselling fiction title of 1931 and 1932, winning Pearl Buck the 1932 Pulitzer Prize. In 1938 she also won the Nobel Literature Prize for her 'rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China.' Eighty or ninety years down the track, I'm wondering if now she'd be more likely to be accused of cultural appropriation, for Buck was American, although she lived for a time with her missionary parents in China. Gone are the days a writer can simply spin an imaginative yarn based on meticulous research or close observation of others without getting in hot water.

Anyway, I digress.

This novel spans the life of its main character, Wang Lung, from the eve of his wedding day as a peasant farmer to his elderly years, as the head of a wealthy family. His passion for the land (the good earth of the title) combined with his savvy real-estate skills and the cleverness of his wife, earns him huge material success. But the story also takes its characters through some very rough patches of famine and war. 

This book's outstanding character is Wang Lung's wife, the under-appreciated O-lan. He purchases her, sight unseen, from the House of Hwang, the local gentry. O-lan is one of their plainest slaves, since Wang couldn't afford a pretty girl. There is nothing remotely romantic about the transaction, except that prior to their first night together, Wang Lung decides to wash his entire body for the first time since his boyhood. 

The young woman's exceptional frugality and initiative revolutionises his life, boosting Wang's comfort level in ways he'd never imagined. Still, he simply considers that he'd got what he paid for. O-lan even delivers her own babies quietly behind a closed door and then returns to her farmwork. No wonder we're often told the smile on her lips rarely reaches her eyes. She's regarded as slow and stupid because she's quiet, but it's evident to readers that her insightful wisdom keeps the household afloat. Whenever quiet O-lan speaks, we readers sit up and pay attention, knowing that she must consider the import worth the effort. 

 I think the crux of the story is that every upwards financial move chips away at a person's character, reducing our ability to enjoy what we've achieved. (Sorry to all the rich people out there.) Wang Lung's initial satisfaction with simple blessings from nature and willingness to work hard morphs over the years into a grasping, irritable, restless personality. Yet he retains enough of his early passion for the land to realise, too late, that his sons have lost sight of what he held most precious. There is a tinge of inevitability to the progression, since Wang makes sure to provide the boys with the culture and education he never had. Only later does it dawn on Wang Lung that in the process, their hearts were infused with entirely different values from his own early ones.

Whenever the urgency of simply living is no longer an issue, nothing suits Wang Lung, including his own wife. For when you've 'arrived' nothing that used to suffice seems good enough anymore.

 He's really a total arse, but we are challenged to wonder whether that's just human nature. It's darkly comedic when the oldest son goes through a phase of moodiness because he has the leisure to. Then instead of feeling irritated because the kid is a pain in the neck, Wang Lung feels proud that his boy exhibits the disgruntled traits of rich young men. We're prompted to ponder a chicken-or-egg sort of a question. Does a person's personality shape their wealth building or does their wealth building shape their personality?

Toward the end of the book, we are told, 'The people who used to say Wang the Farmer now said Wang the Big Man or Wang the Rich Man.' Therefore he is technically a huge success, but does pay a price for something that brings no real happiness. 

And the ending reminds us that we can't take any of it with us.

I'm giving this book just three stars because I found it so triggering, especially regarding the sorry plight of females. It left me with a melancholic readers' hangover. But I'm sure many other readers may give it five stars for the very same reasons. My back cover blurb calls it, 'Pearl Buck's magnificent Pulitzer prizewinning novel.' Well, lots of sordid and desperate stuff happens over a long time span, if that's what they mean by magnificent. I guess it is rather Biblical in its scope. Wang Lung's family saga puts me in mind of the patriarch Jacob's family in the Book of Genesis, with poor old O-lan taking on the Leah role. 

Perhaps I'll put it out there as a timely recommendation for anyone who's ever felt taken for granted. No matter who we are, I can guarantee that O-lan and her daughters fare far, far worse. The horrific foot binding is just the tip of the iceberg. 

🌟🌟🌟

'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' by Agatha Christie

This year's Read Christie Challenge has the changing decades of publication as its theme. And January's choice is this novel that set the ball rolling.  

MY THOUGHTS: 

This is the story that started it all. It's Agatha Christie's debut mystery, written in 1916 and published in 1920. She first introduces us to Hercule Poirot, who is already considered one of the finest detectives of his day. Belgian refugees were fleeing from the thick of World War One and arriving in Christie's home town, to which we owe the conception of her most famous personality. We also meet other recurring characters; the ferret-featured Inspector Jimmy Japp, and the surprisingly youthful Captain Arthur Hastings, a 30-year-old soldier invalided home from the Front. I admit, I'd never imagined him as such a relative baby before.

Young Hastings is invited to stay at the grand country estate of Styles, where he spent time in his boyhood. His old friends, John and Lawrence Cavendish still live there with their stepmother, Mrs Inglethorp, although she has now married her male secretary, a far younger man everyone suspects of gold-digging. When poor Mrs Inglethorp suffers an agonising death in bed late one night, an autopsy reveals a dose of strychnine killed her. But was it administered to her nightcap cup of coffee or her supper mug of cocoa? The finger of suspicion points straight at her unpopular husband, but Inglethorp turns out to have a rock solid alibi. Yet it's unthinkable that her stepsons, grateful boarder or loyal staff members could have done it. Hastings' cleverest move in the whole story is dashing off to beg Poirot's help to figure out the mess. 

Hastings sets up his pattern of being a bit of a doofus, for which he's teased by Poirot throughout all their subsequent cases, committing errors of extremes. He either skims the surface of clues where he should have probed deeper, or flails in way too deep, jumping to rash conclusions and letting his imagination run away with him. As Poirot says, Hastings has no instincts. And he's also a sucker for flattery.

I like this passage, in which Poirot muses about the crook and gives Hastings a backhanded compliment.

'Yes, he is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all.'

I acquiesced.

'There, mon ami, you will be of great assistance to me.'

I was pleased with the compliment. There were times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth.  

'Yes,' he continued, staring at me thoughtfully. 'You will be invaluable.' 

Yet we readers are challenged not to be too hard on Hastings, since it's written in such a way that we probably won't piece together the solution from the patchwork of clues right in front of us either. I didn't, although I did foresee a nice little romance.  

I enjoyed the intro to this edition, written by Agatha Christie herself. She describes how she was inspired to write this story by her wartime work in a Red Cross dispensary, similar to the character of Cynthia Murdoch in this story. Christie admits that her war work helped her establish poisons and drugs as her very favourite murder weapon in her stories. Turns out she felt far less confident with firearms. 'People can't, of course, be poisoned every time, but I'm happier when they are. Especially the drug that allows the victim to gasp out one, unnecessarily cryptic sentence before expiring.' 

I'm glad she could be so tongue-in-cheek about what turned out to be such a brilliant career for her. And I agree that for a debut murder mystery by a young author, this was pretty good and watertight. 

🌟🌟🌟½   

'Kilmeny of the Orchard' by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Later this year will be Lucy Maud's Montgomery's 150th birthday. It's an excellent reason to focus on her novels. The Race Who Knows Joseph Book Club on Bookstagram will be reading them in publication order throughout 2024. I decided to join them, starting with this story from her youth.

MY THOUGHTS: 

This short romance novel was from early in Montgomery's writing career. I believe she wrote it in her teens, and it was published in 1910, not long after Anne of Green Gables. Now, sit tight while I try to explain why this story makes me see red. 

Eric Marshall is a young university graduate and dreamboat; a total package sort of guy all the girls drool over. And he's already being quizzed by his father and friends, at the age of 24, as to why he isn't inclined to engage himself to one of the many lovely girls he knows. The answer turns out to be that he's waiting for absolute perfection. 

Anyway, Eric accepts a plea from his ailing friend, Larry, to come and do some substitute school teaching until he recuperates. There in the little backwater town on Prince Edward Island, Eric chances upon a lonely and romantic old orchard where a reclusive, stunningly beautiful girl plays violin like an angel. She turns out to be Kilmeny Gordon, whose initial reaction to Eric is one of sheer terror. She's never set eyes on another man outside of her immediate family and the egg peddler, let alone one as drop-dead gorgeous as Eric. They strike up a friendship which becomes rock solid in a matter of days. 

Eric has finally discovered a girl whose beauty ticks his high standards. Her wide-eyed naivety, and inclination to treat his every word as an oracle probably exceeds his wildest dreams. She's a one-dimensional character but that suits him, for he is another.

Kilmeny cannot communicate except through her violin and her trusty slate and chalk. Her backstory involves an intriguing possibility for her muteness, since there is absolutely nothing wrong with her vocal apparatus. Even though she quickly grows to love Eric wholeheartedly, Kilmeny refuses to marry him unless, by some miracle, she acquires the power of speech. She believes it would be unfair on him to put up with a mute wife. (There's a nice bit of ableism right there, but hold on, the 'isms' keep coming.) 

Eric's good friend David Baker, a clever speech specialist, deems Kilmeny's silence psychological, which makes the whole stalemate extra tricky. 

Maybe I'd rank this book higher if not for the plight of poor Neil, the boy of Italian descent who's partly Kilmeny's adopted cousin and partly a convenient plot device. The Gordon family are convinced they've always done right by Neil, who was born beneath their roof. They even, 'had him baptised, same as any Christian child.' Nice one, dudes! Reading between the lines, it's clear to the modern reader (although apparently not to LMM herself), that he's always suffered filthy racism and been kept at arm's length by his nearest and dearest, who just can't see what they've done to him. Neil, in his own tragic way, bears a 'curse of the innocent' as much as Kilmeny is said to do. 

It's no wonder he has a sullen countenance! And I totally get why, after loving and caring for Kilmeny for so long, he'd develop an intense grudge against Eric, this smug Marty Stu character who breezes in and wins everyone's hearts after three measly weeks. 

Neil's running away is treated as a blessing, which elicits a sigh of relief all round. No member of the Gordon family will try to track him down, even though he's been with them since he drew his first breath. Uncle Thomas' self-righteous, 'We have cared for him as our own...' is super-hypocritical in light of his earlier instruction to Kilmeny not to make an equal of Neil. Yet he can't see it. You see, to them, the tainted Mediterranean blood that flows through Neil's veins makes him a potentially volatile, embarrassing second-class citizen. My gosh, the whole Gordon family attitude is appalling! 

But hey, it's happily ever after for everyone but Neil. Eric the newcomer, backed by his father's considerable Canadian lineage and wealth, wins the girl and nobody is happier to see the back of Neil than he. Kilmeny can at last give her fingers a break from scribbling so fast on that slate. She was as chatty and effusive with her pencil as Anne of Green Gables was with her tongue, and wrote such very long speeches, Eric must have waited around twiddling his thumbs a lot. And there is absolutely no need for Uncle Thomas and Aunt Janet to take a good, hard look at themselves, since Neil has conveniently removed himself from the picture. 'We have made more of him than we should,' Thomas decides. Charming way to regard your own adopted son.

(Sigh) Although I aim to overlook the standards of their own eras when ranking old novels, sometimes one comes along that pushes my buttons a bit too hard. My low score here is mostly about the triggers, but I also feel Maud was still finding her voice and perfecting her craft when she wrote this book. She's given Kilmeny's parents a melodramatic history which puts me in mind of the sensational stories that Anne and her friends wrote for their Story Club. And Kilmeny and Eric's relationship is a bit too saccharine sweet. She's a perfect fairy tale princess and he's Prince Charming. Lucy Maud Montgomery does Disney here. It wouldn't surprise me if Maud ended up agreeing with me, since she eventually decided love scenes were a challenge for her. This is probably her most lovey-dovey attempt at fiction. 

I'm willing to wonder if Montgomery might have even agreed with my one-star ranking for this early novel of hers, and lampooned it herself down the track. Overall, I'm so glad she became a more sensitive writer who gave her characters far more depth as she progressed.  

🌟