"Anne of Windy Poplars" by LM Montgomery
Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot publish Anne of Windy Poplars on our site. However, depending on copyright laws in your country, you may download it for free from Project Gutenberg Australia. This review was originally published on my personal blog, book-a-rama.
In the fourth of the Anne of Green Gables series, our heroine Anne Shirley has graduated university and gained a position as principal of Summerside High School. Anne's on her own. She has to make new friends in a new town. Not much of a problem for Anne, you might think, but she finds herself in hostile territory. The town is run by a family named Pringle, and Summerside is lousy with Pringles. The Pringles are a clannish group who have a passive aggressive way of running people they don't like out of town. Poor Anne unknowingly took the post of principal from...a Pringle. Somehow (I won't say how) Anne gets the Pringles on her side just when she's about to give it all up. Anne goes on to make friends with nearly every odd character she runs across until her three years are up, and she heads back to Avonlea.
Told mostly through letters to Gilbert, the book's full of Anne's peppy optimism. Anne vows to find the good in everyone, making the reader think that even the most surly curmudgeon has a warm, fuzzy side. The townspeople are often caricatures of small town folk. The nosies, the talkers, the "old blood". Sometimes it gets a bit much, but I recognized people I know in the characters. Montgomery's pen is sharp, but there's love in her writing.
I love reading the Anne series. I'm not sure Anne of Windy Poplars can be considered a children's book. Anne's a young woman in her twenties tackling the working world. Montgomery is probably one of the most recognizable Canadian authors. Her books are such fun to read with beautifully written prose. When I think of CanLit now, I can't help thinking, where did it turn a 180? There's great writing, sure, but finding a happy ending in a modern Canadian novel is like finding a needle in a haystack. What a bunch of downers we've become. If John took requests for the Wednesday Compare, I'd suggest he pit Montgomery against Atwood: Optimist vs Pessimist.
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I just finished this one. It was rather different than the other ones I've read in the series so far. I wonder why LM Montgomery decided to write this one in 1936 and stick it in between the 2 other books in the series she had already written (Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams).
There were some great characters and funny incidents. However I found it annoying that Anne kept changing everyone's lives for the better. I actually wanted to see her make some mistakes or horribly destroy something like the perky Anne in the first books.
Do you think it would change my impression of Anne and her story if I skipped reading this one book? I find it really hard to look for a PDF version of this eBook compared to the others..
Hi Yna--the reason this is hard to find is that LM Montgomery wrote this after she had written the other Anne books, but for some reason decided to make it chronologically in the middle of the series. You can find the text only at Project Gutenberg Australia where it is out of copyright. It it sill in copyright in the US and Canada, which is why you can't find it on this site or other sites based in these countries.
I would say you can safely skip this one and start directly on Anne's House of Dreams.
Thank you so much Laura! After a year, I finally saw your reply, I've forgotten I ever put a comment here. 🙂