on Rilla…

After a multiple month hiatus, I finished Rilla of Ingleside by the light of the setting sun on my stoop.  Never mind the neighbors passing by wondering why that young girl is blubbering in public.  Never mind the tissue tumbleweeds sitting next to me.  Never mind that as I closed the book and looked at my own gate, Kenneth Ford was not standing there and I did not fall into my childhood speech habit.  Yes, never mind all of this……….

On paper this book is all wrong.  There are very few prominent characters from previous books that take a central, narrative role.  War is raging for the majority of the novel and the tone is fairly (often extremely) somber.  There is little reliance on neighborhood gossip or funny stories of childish mishaps that so characterize the other novels.  These all set Rilla apart from the other novels in the series.

So why is this one of my clear favorites?!

There is a beautiful balance of sorrow (WALTERRRRRR!!!) and hope in this novel and I would reckon that it is one of the most poignant insights we as readers have into L.M. Montgomery’s life experience.  When I read this novel I feel that she has poured her soul into Rilla’s story of growing up in a dark and uncertain time. There is palpable pain in the story and an aching that I feel on every page.  Maybe this is why it took me so long to read it this year-in the midst of a very difficult school semester (not to mention a colder, longer and harsher than normal winter) I wasn’t in an emotional place to willingly add more darkness.  Only when the sun comes out and the city comes alive and I wake up each morning to the breeze in my window can I willingly go there.

Maybe it’s so meaningful because I see myself in Rilla.  I didn’t raise a war baby or wear the same green hat for 4 years or send 3 brothers to the trenches.  But I can see myself in her emotional journey, in her quickly learned maturity and in the way that she finds herself to be stronger than she ever gave herself credit for.

Still waiting for Ken though..

-lil sis

Rilla-my-Rilla…

I’m struggling to create posts about Rilla. The hilarious raspberry cordial-esque episodes that we’ve come to know and love are few and far between. This is war. This is death. This is hard stuff. This is an emotional book and a beautiful book and quite possibly my favorite of the eight (haven’t I already said that about at least two, maybe three other books?)

I don’t really know what to say about it…

Am I allowed to say that my political ideologies might line up more with Whiskers on the Moon than with Susan Baker?

Am I allowed to say that every time Walter dies it hits me like a ton of bricks and makes me truly sad?

Am I allowed to say how I ache for Una?

Am I allowed to say how I want to know more about our quiet little brown boy, Shirley?

Am I allowed to say that I wish I was Gertrude, living with the Blythes  and getting to be a fly on the wall of their war-time Ingleside lives?

Am I allowed to say that Mary Vance still gets on my nerves even though she saved little Jims?

Am I allowed to say how much I feel this book? Does that even makes sense?

I suppose I’m allowed to say all that and more because it’s (half) my blog and I’ll say what I want to! I may be back with more later, but I still have to read the last few chapters (yes, I’ve been super slow with this one) Never fear, though… I won’t be gone for long. For now I’ll leave us with a passage that I marked in chapter 19 – there was sometime about it that stayed with me:

“I wonder,” said Gertrude dreamily, “if some great blessing, great enough for the price, will be the meed of all our pain? Is the agony in which the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era? Or is it merely a futile ‘struggle of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?’
We think very lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more importance than we think ants?”

“You forget,” said Mr. Meredith, with a flash of his dark eyes, “that an infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as much importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth-pangs of a new era­ but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything else. I am not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth as the immediate result of this war. That is not the way God works. But work He does, Miss Oliver, and in the end His purpose will be fulfilled.”

-big sis

Autumnal Inspiration

Hello devoted reader(s) and Fannes from far and wide!

Contrary to popular belief, the Anne Girls have not been captured by pirates or stricken by the fever; we’re just… busy. Here in Chile, autumn is creeping in and the school year is kicking off (think: early September) so I find myself in a frenzied state of school supplies and attempts to switch out of summer mode whilst remembering how to do my job. I think it would be wise to channel Miss Stacy right about now, who was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally… -Green Gables, ch. 24

Hmmm

That’s a tall order.

Speaking of a tall order, would anyone else like a coffee right about now?

Off to be an adult…

-big sis

PS: still reading Rilla, slowly but surely…

Theoretical Theorizing…

Confession: I have had the hardest time reading lately!  I started Rilla of Ingleside over a week ago, but every time I go to pick it up and start reading, something stops me.  I have a few theories, so I thought I’d hash them out here.

Too much multitasking: I’m in school.  I’ve got 2 majors and a minor.  I’m averaging a couple hundred pages of required school reading every week.  It’s hard to get my brain to read anymore than it has to!  Once you’ve finished an essay by Durkheim, 2 chapters on peace negotiations in the Balkans and Mrs. Dalloway in its entirety, (on top of having weird dreams) my mind is DONE! FINISHED! FINITO! Call Mr. White, because my brain QUITS!

There’s only so much it can take.  And though the content would be cathartic and restorative, the physical action of reading is more than my poor little eyes can handle.  It’s much easier to sit back, watch another episode of West Wing and call it a night.

Emotional turmoil:  This book turns me into an emotional wreck. Keep the mascara away, and bring out the jumbo Puffs, because once this book gets going, I start to resemble our friend Nancy:

That’s right, Rilla of Ingleside is an emotional crowbar to my knee…and by knee I mean heart.  (If only I could expand the metaphor and make Mary Vance be Tonya Harding…) But  I digress… This book stresses me out, breaks my heart and leaves me with a pitiful tear-stained face on the subway.

Don’t mistake me-I love Rilla. At times, I would put it in the running to be one of my top faves of the eight.  But the emotional dedication required to read this book can be intimidating.   Am I prepared for the emotional rollercoaster, highs and lows, and yes-snot- that this book causes?!

The bend in the road that leads to Windy Poplars: I love all of the Anne books.  I really do.

However.

Anne of Windy Poplars can be a bit….vexing.  When nudged in between Anne of the Island and Anne’s House of Dreams it is a nice and at times even enchanting slice of Anne’s life.  But since we are reading the books in their published order this year, we will go straight from the raw emotional no man’s land that is my heart to……………..Kingsport Ladies College.  hm.  Somehow battling the Pringles doesn’t seem as tough as sending your children to war.

So those are my theories.  What do you think? And how do I overcome them?

I’ll keep you posted..

-lil sis

a letter

Dear Sister,

I just wanted to let you know that I started reading Rilla today. I’ve only read the first chapter, but I’m already reminded of how much I love this book.

I mean I LOVE this book.

I know, I know… I say that about all the Anne books… but it’s true! And isn’t it fun opening one after a year has gone by and being swept up all over again as if it was the first read?

Yes, I knew you would understand.

You, of all people, would understand.

You just get me. Some call it synergy, others call it freaky, I call it awesome.

We’re like peanut butter and jelly. Stephanie and DJ. Mary Clancy and Rachel Devery (alias Kim Novack and Fleur-de-lis). There are few people on earth who understand my finer quirks. There are fewer people on earth who understand that third reference I just made. The fact that you do both without blinking is one of the five millions reasons that I like you.

Speaking of those two crazy kids…

(How’d you like that transition?)

Remember that time we were together in the park in NYC trying to blog together? It went something like this:

And by the way, if I don’t see you soon I’m seriously contemplating an act of desperation.

Yours affectionately,

Big Sis

oh, my life…

In the real world, I’m working my tail off helping to lead relief efforts for earthquake victims here in Chile. In the Anne world, I’m Rilla. Well, hopefully not quite as flighty. Let’s say that I represent the middle/later years with the Junior Reds.

I suppose that’s the fun of knowing the whole story – I can still be reading Green Gables but living Rilla.

So where’s my Kenneth Ford??

-big sis