The Blythes are Quoted

 The Blythes are Quoted, by L. M. Montgomery

The day before her (sadly, almost certainly self-inflicted) death in 1942, L. M. Montgomery turned in one final manuscript.  The editors don't seem to have known quite what to do with it, and while versions were published a couple of times, the whole thing was never published in the form LMM wanted it until 2009.

It's a bit of a strange book, because even though Anne, Gilbert, and the Blythe children are the organizing principle of the text, they feel mostly absent.  It's divided into two halves of stories and poems set before, and then after, WWI.  One story goes all the way up to 1939 and the start of WWII.  The idea is that we move between stories, which are about other people in the area, with references to the Blythes here and there, and occasional Blythe family evenings with Anne reading out her own, or later on Walter's, poetry.  After a poem or two there will be a short family dialogue.

The stories are mostly quite good, and some are excellent.  There's a fantastic one about a new young clergyman who has to board in a haunted house.  Of course, he doesn't believe in ghosts -- there must be some explanation -- but nobody has been able to solve the problem.  In one, an aged spinster walks for miles to tell a dying man exactly what she thinks of him.  I also really enjoyed one in which a man who has been mooning over his boyhood crush for his entire life meets her again, and gets a shock to his system.

The stories, while very consistent with Montgomery's oeuvre, as a whole carry themes of tragedy, bitterness, old age, and/or disappointment.  She usually ends on a high note; the neglected and ill-used children find good homes, but the hope and humor are heavily laced with grief.  At the end, Anne and Gilbert are loving, wise, and reasonably happy grandparents, but they've never been the same since Walter's death.   Montgomery struggled with depression for most of her life, and you can tell here.  That's partly what I love about her, though; she knew all about the difficulties of life, and in her writings she acknowledges, but does not dwell, on them.  She looks for the the good things that keep us going.

 I did find that the constant references to members of the Blythe household, especially Susan Baker, to be kind of wearing; they didn't seem to me to add to the stories most of the time.  The poetry was fine, but the Blythes really only have a couple of topics that they write poetry about -- firstly, the joys of nature, and secondarily love (of friends, family, home, and grief when those are lost).

This is very much worth reading if you're a Montgomery devotee.  Medium-level fans should read some of the short stories.