L. M. Montgomery -- The Blue Castle

This was a Montgomery I hadn't read before -- although it doesn't make much difference. Her books tend to blend together after awhile. Of course I can still distinguish Anne from Emily -- one has red hair and the other black, uh duh -- but they all, novels, short stories, series -- follow the same mold, and are about roughly the same thing, the only difference being that sometimes she writes about small children finding fraternal and parental love in small towns in Canada (usually from tough, aunt-like old maids who find their lives mysteriously turned around by the young orphan or half orphan or whatever that they have graciously agreed to care for from a sense of duty) and sometimes she writes about young women who have paricular, dreamy notions about what love ought to be and what is waiting for them, and gently or ungently are led to the realization that the boy they have known from childhood fits the very ideal they didn't know they had in small towns in Canada. (The revelations take place at night, either from the fear that the loved one is going to die, or the conviction that he will soon marry someone else, or a significant look passed between them while other people chatter on, oblivious. Occasionally a combination of two or more of the above.) Often the heroine has literary ambitions of one sort or another, and we can thrill and sympathize with her acceptances and rejections by popular magazines. And of course, there are always poetical descriptions of the Canadian wilderness -- or small rural towniness -- in the various seasons, somehow always managing to be beautiful, when really you're willing to bet that beautiful or not, the characters are freezing their collective asses off. (Our Heroine isn't beautiful, though -- it's always her best friend, or occasionally her cousin, who's really the stunner. But Our Heroine is beautiful in an unconvential way -- in certain lights and moods and whatevers she manages to outshine her companions. So she finds True Love anyway.)

Sometimes you get the feeling that you know rather more about Ms. Montgomery's psyche than she is aware of having told you. But anyway.

All this is very satisfying to read about, as long as you don't expect anything different. You can read a new book and have it feel like an old one. Whatever Josephine Tey's bedridden detective says about it, there are times when a new-old book is the most comforting and fun kind to read. You have all the fun of a new book, new characters and twists and turns you haven't exactly taken before -- but at the same time it's very un-taxing on the brain and you know exactly how it will turn out, and you can enjoy the ride free of any sort of stress or anxiety, just getting pleasantly emotionally involved with the heroine's various love trials while knowing it will end perfectly wonderfully for everyone involved.

The Blue Castle is a case in point, obviously, or I would have been describing it for the last three paragraphs. It is almost the Platonic form of Montgomery. Valancy Stirling, an old maid at twenty-nine and completely under her mother's thumb, whose only joy comes from reading nature books by an anonymous author and her own daydreams of a Blue Castle, complete with white knights, has been suffering heart palpitations. She goes to the doctor and discovers she is seriously ill and has anywhere from a month to a year to live. After a "white night" -- Montgomery's words -- she decides (as one does) that she's sick of living for other people. She begins saying exactly what she thinks to her family members -- causing a predictable amount of rumpus -- , and eventually leaves to nurse a dying classmate who is scorned by the other townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock. Under her death sentence, Valancy becomes more and more emotionally free, and eventually marries Barney Snaith, a local recluse with a bad reputation. If you've ever read a Montgomery book -- or really, any book -- before now, you know what's coming. But it's fun nonetheless.

Valancy isn't quite as charming as Anne or Emily -- which is pretty much why it's a standalone -- but she's fun to read about; equal parts submissive and sarcastic, and interesting either way. Her Barney can be annoying at times, (but so can Emily's Teddy; not even this is new) and very occasionally I wanted to bop him on the head with something moderately heavy. A puppy, say, or a large paperback book. But I could see why Valancy fell for him (I keep wanting to type Valency, as if she were an electron), and nothing he did offended me too much. Not my type, but they can't all be Gilbert. Who, now that I think of it, occasionally showed traces of the same sexism as all the others, so what can you do.

I finished the whole thing in one day -- most of it in one evening, because I was putting off application work. And I got exactly as emotionally involved as I wanted to be. I like Valancy; she doesn't have Anne's charm, but she's got conviction, and she's fun in a modern kind of way. She's sarcastic, and she does things for good reasons. Plus, the men around her are allowed to swear and get drunk off their asses without her minding at all. She is not allowed to do these things -- nor does she have any desire to do them -- but it's refreshing that the other characters not held back by her ladylike charms. And her love story is relatively believable, if you're in the Montgomery mindset when you start the book.

It has all the usual Montgomery weaknesses, of course. If you're not in the mood for it, there's no point reading it; you'll only get annoyed. Even in the mood for it, there are three or four scenes that just go on too long. Montgomery's dialogue is generally very strong, but she can get carried away in her descriptions. Yes, we get the point. A paragraph by paragraph description of each of Valancy's many aunts and uncles, and the individual ways in which they have been horrible to her isn't necessary. Nor is a three page description of her various childhood tragedies, nor is the detailed description of the Canadian wilderness in month of the year. Thank you, Lucy, we get it. I'll be sure to vacation there the very next chance I get. Move the damn story along, why don't you?

But the general impression of the book is sweet, and predictible, and nice. You're happy for the lovers, and it's comforting to see Valancy turn her life around. No reminders of the actual annoyances of living in her circumstances, or anything like that. Only exactly as much salt as Montgomery puts in to make her books readable. Very relaxing after a long day, but don't read it when you have things you'd rather be doing. If that makes sense.