knickshaw

The final book in the Anne of Green Gables series makes a solemn capstone to an amazing run. My Dad bought me these books when I was little on the condition that I read all of them, and I've just now fulfilled that promise. Covering the duration of World War One, this book, along with Anne's House of Dreams, is definitely one of the saddest in the series. Yet these two books give the characters of Anne and her children, including the title character, her youngest daughter Rilla, a more rounded feel. The story left me with a sense that the soul can bear a lot more suffering than any of us usually think it can. There is something terrible in that, since the last thing any of us want to experience is more suffering, but also something hopeful, since it helps us to understand that we can live through it and have a sense of happiness again. Maybe not the same unburdened happiness that we used to have--but happiness nonetheless. Although the book dragged in parts (as I'm sure real life did in those times as people waited desperately for word of their loved ones at the western front), any book that so unapologetically forces me to read it in two days and makes me cry deserves five stars.

2022-10-26 15:52