Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a lot of ways, I wanted to HATE this novel. At least for the first few years of Anne's life at Green Gables, it was a green meadow of paradise in upper Canada filled with a ton of minor self-inflicted disasters, with Anne her worst nightmare. :)

Okay. Maybe it doesn't sound so bad when I put it that way. After all, aren't most of the Harry Potter books the SAME DAMN THING?

Ah, but at least HP had magic. All Anne has is IMAGINATION. An abundance of imagination, daydreaming, and a tongue that JUST CAN'T STOP... or at least, can't stop until she puts a few years on her 11-year-old self. (MY GOD, I WANTED TO ROOT FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTED TO DESTROY HER.)

Okay, no one wanted to destroy her. She's a loveable orphan in the orphan-as-hero tradition and at least she wasn't kicking in the doors of poor goblins to murder their children, although she did have a sharp enough tongue to lash the hell out of old, ugly harridans who would dare look down on her for her red hair.

MOVING ON.

Yes, this is a wonderful exercise in loving the living hell out of the idea of the imagination and how much love and life can be brought into a couple of sexless old siblings living together in the middle of nowhere. It encourages all the little children inside of us who were chastised for being forgetful, flighty, and otherwise willful to the exclusion of anything remotely practical. After all, imagination is king and it's so damn delightful, RIGHT?

Maybe if we're too sleepy to see that imagination is all around us already, this might be a kick in the pants, but for me, the uptight past is still uptight and giving this novel tons of praise ignores the strides we've made since then.

If I want minor hijinx and sincere apologies and silliness, I want it with magic, please. :)

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