What a delightful story. Anne of Green Gables will always own my heart with her flights of fancy but Emily of New Moon can have a sliver of it too, showing that Montgomery could write more than one charming young girl series. The book opens with Emily being told, rather brutally, that her father is dying. Never having gone to school and having had her mother die when she was very small, her father has been Emily's whole world. After his death, her mother's estranged relatives come to collect her and draw straws to see which of them will have to take her, they being the Murrays and always concerned with doing the proper thing as a result of their pride. Emily and her Aunt Elizabeth get off on the wrong foot as Emily knows she is simply a duty to Elizabeth, not a dearly beloved niece but there is hope in the shape of Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy. This tale of Emily's life the first several years at New Moon Farm is charming and Emily is, in her own way, as appealing a little miss as Anne, writing poetry and novels (her worry about how to spring one of her characters from a convent, not being Catholic herself and so not quite certain of the rules governing convents, is quite funny) and giving her heart to those who will only love her back. The book also contains delightful stories about the inhabitants of rural PEI, their hopes and dreams and the way that the community intereacts. The book is probably old-fashioned but for those children who appreciate the historical and would like to have had the chance to read by candlelight or wear pinafores and button-up boots, this will be a happy reading experience. I wish I'd found it when I was devouring all the Anne books but I am just as happy to be reading it now as an adult, enjoying the simplicity and sense of peace that pervades the story telling. I will definitely be reading the remaining books in the trilogy.
