Anne's House of Dreams

1917, 1987 Bantam edition
L. M. Montgomery
Anne's House of Dreams
Bought used for $1.98
Slightly worn paperback
B+

This has the worst cover of any edition of an "Anne book" I own, with Anne and Gilbert looking very cartoony.  Not only that, they're both shown as redheads, when his hair is supposed to be dark.  But, yes, don't judge a book by its cover, because this is possibly my favorite in the series.

Anne and Gilbert get married and move to the title location, an isolated home on the coast, where they seem to have only four near neighbors: Captain Jim, Miss Cornelia, and the Moores.  However, these are among the most interesting characters Montgomery created.  Captain Jim is similar to Uncle Jabe in Mary Midthorne, but all his tales of adventure are true.  He's also wise and kind, and sort of feminist.  (He thinks women can't write, but he does think they should have the vote and anything else they want, the dears.)  Miss Cornelia is one of those rare characters who's as funny as the author thinks, with an ability to say the unsayable in a surprising way.  When she talks to Susan, the kindly housekeeper, the two of them will say things like it's so sad that someone is going to Heaven. 

The Moores seem to be Leslie and her husband Dick, but there's a twist later where it turns out that it's actually Dick's look-alike cousin George.  They're one pair of matching bookends, different as night and day.  Well, not quite, but Dick is a mean, cheating drunk and George is relatively nice.  However, George got beat up in Havana and lost his memory for a dozen years.  So Leslie, whose life is full of tragedy, is sacrificing her life for a man she's never even met.  And then Owen Ford shows up, and they fall in love, although they don't know each other's feelings, and their love is forbidden, and it all sounds very soap-operatic, especially when you throw in Anne's firstborn dying its first day of life.

And yet, it works.  Montgomery has mastered a variety of emotional tones by now, and she expertly handles the more mature content.  In fact, this is the first book where I have to break out the "YA" (Young Adult) label, because I think this is more of a book for teens than for children.  After all, it does include "shameless orgies of love-making and ecstasies of adoration."

Actually, that's Anne and Leslie ooing and ahing over Anne's second baby, Jem.  There is, however, a sense in which this story is more about Anne and Leslie's love than it is about newlywed bliss.  Gilbert is around, but often in the background, while Anne and the narrator seem much more interested in beautiful, mysterious, bitter but good-hearted Leslie.  And I can't really blame them.


As for "love-making," it must've retained that sense of "flattering and charming people" at least until the 1950s.  I no longer own Silver Chair, but there's a similar use of the term there, which confused the heck out of me as a kid.  (I knew that in 1932 it meant "to woo," since there's a line in Horse Feathers that's something like "Are you making love to me, Professor?")  It's pretty funny to run across it in Pride & Prejudice, but you expect language to have changed since the 1810s.


I know, somewhat off topic.  So I'll get back on topic by noting that telephones are mentioned in this book that must be set in the 1890s.  Montgomery mentions the Grits (Liberals) getting back into power after 18 years, which would place that part of the book as 1896.  But the math of http://avonlea.hu/cd/websites/hendricks_paul/kindreds/chronology.html means that this book is set 1890 to '92.  If it were 1896, then this would mess up the World War I chronology in Rilla of Ingleside.  Still, close enough, and it does allow Montgomery a great pay-off to a minor character, a double pay-off really, when he shaves his beard and becomes engaged to Miss Cornelia.