What do you think?
Rate this book
Pollyanna #9
Η Πολυάννα και το μυστικό της ευτυχίας
Το μυστικό της δικής της ευτυχίας, το είχε βρει η Πολυάννα όταν ήταν κοριτσάκι ακόμα, με το "παιχνίδι της χαράς". Aργότερα ανακάλυψε πως, πέρα απ' αυτόν τον ιδιαίτερο τρόπο για ν' αντιμετωπίζει τη ζωή και τα προβλήματά της, βρίσκεται η αγάπη. Η αγάπη των άλλων, που βγάζει το άτομο από τον εγωισμό του, ευρύνει τον ορίζοντά του και πλουτίζει τη ζωή του. Μια προσωρινή δυσμένεια της τύχης, η αναχώρηση του συζύγου της για μια μακρινή αποστολή, αναγκάζει την Πολυάννα να κερδίσει τη ζωή της και τη ζωή των παιδιών της. Η συνάντησή της μ' ένα διάσημο γιατρό προσανατολίζει την ενεργητικότητά της σ' έναν δρόμο όπου, με τις ικανότητές της, θα έχει την ευκαιρία, άλλη μια φορά, να εξυπηρετήσει τους άλλους. Δεν πρόκειται τώρα πια για τον στενό κύκλο της οικογένειάς της και μερικών φίλων, αλλά για άντρες και γυναίκες που "βασανίζονται με τον εαυτό τους", εξαιτίας περιστάσεων θλιβερών ή τραγικών, και που θ' αγωνιστεί για να τους ξαναβάλει στον ίσιο δρόμο...
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
237 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 28, 2024
It's a pleasure to get back to the Pollyanna books after a break of several months.
This time Jimmy sets off for a year on an engineering job where Pollyanna and the kids can't follow. He's an eleventh hour team member joining a high-profile expedition to the South Pole. I must say, he breaks the news to his wife in a tactless, un-Jimmylike way, along these lines. 'Chance of a lifetime... make or break career opportunity... but if you say the word, Pollyanna, I'll turn it down right now.' What does he expect her to do?
Alas, Pollyanna is true to character. Remember in Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms when she didn't tell Jimmy she was pregnant before he shipped off to the war? This time she hides info she's just discovered that their bank has gone broke. Jimmy assumes his family will live off his savings. It seems strange that he wouldn't check such a vital detail, even with just a day's notice, but oh well, whatever.
The upshot is that Pollyanna joins the jobseekers in Boston. A lot of her desperation makes no sense in the context of the whole series. Why look for modest rooms to rent, instead of staying with Aunt Ruth and Uncle John, who are loaded with dough? Even if the older couple are away on one of his research trips, isn't that all the more reason why their close family members should move into that beautiful mansion? But John and Ruth don't even get a mention in this story. Again, oh well, whatever.
Pollyanna ends up as the non-professional assistant of Dr Bennet, a psychiatrist. Her job will be regular chit chat with several selected patients to work her Glad Game magic on them. It sounds dodgy to readers in our era, for somebody with no training whatsoever in the mental health sector to be hired for such a responsibility, but this was the 1930s. Dr Bennet even sets her up in an apartment conducive to entertaining. In other words, Pollyanna will be getting paid for being herself.
At first I facepalmed, for Dr Bennet is doing the very thing Aunt Polly dreaded during Pollyanna's childhood; that is making Pollyanna feel self-conscious and put on the spot. Surely monetizing Pollyanna's gift will take away her beloved spontaneity, especially now that she has to write up formal reports on her new 'friends.' I expected it to destroy the whole spirit of the series, but somehow it works!
Pollyanna has a humble, caring attitude, holds the doctor's trust seriously, and the job takes a great toll on her. The patients themselves are an interesting bunch. There's a novelist, Rada Masters, who has a complex that people are stealing from her. Deborah Dangerfield is a poor little rich teenager who keeps running away from home, and bereft Mrs Garden keeps shoplifting baby clothes without even realizing. Then there's poor Mr Bagley, a transport company director whose wife and son both die in separate accidents on his vehicles! No wonder Pollyanna gets a bit burned out.
She has some wise insights about how the human mind works, after all her years of fascination with people.
Pollyanna reflects:
'Curbed and exercised for our entertainment, the imagination gives us pure happiness. Running wild though, and substituting itself and its manufactured dreams for reality... it plunges us into problems, despair, mental troubles. It's a thing like fire; capable of infinite good and comfort if harnessed and guided and understood, and capable of injuring us in uncounted ways if we permit it to rule us.'
And again:
'Sometimes we think strange things. They are like little sores on our minds, like measles or chicken pox. We get over them. They aren't natural things... don't last forever.'
Pollyanna's children are 13, 10 and 7, which is a few years younger than they were said to be in the previous book (Pollyanna's Castle in Mexico)! Elizabeth Borton messes up her own timeline, but the kids ring more true at these younger ages. Junior acquires a part time job, helping a newspaper office with his photography skills, and grapples with his own conscience crisis of whether or not it's ethical to throw in his lot with the snoopy paparazzi. Delicate Judy aspires to be a professional dancer. At this stage I wonder whether sturdy Ruth, the plain little plodder, will blossom out and eclipse her talented brother and sister in some remarkable way. Time will tell.
Here's a funny speculation. When Ruth assumes her daddy will be working close to Santa Claus, Junior and Judy exchange amused glances because she still believes in Santa Claus, yet neither seem to twig that she's chosen the wrong polar region. Since Elizabeth Borton has got so many other things wrong within her own stories, I can't help wondering if she realised it herself.
Overall, I enjoyed this far more than Elizabeth Borton's two previous Glad Books, in which she went off the rails, turning the stories into sensationalist adverts for their lavish settings. There's been some much-needed course correction here, and she's finally writing more in the initial spirit of Eleanor H. Porter and Harriet Lummis Smith. This book takes place in a normal city suburb with several people walking around beneath black clouds of depression and despair which Pollyanna helps them clear. Hooray, that's all we really want from a Pollyanna book. It's formulaic maybe, yet not predictable, because there is so much scope.
I'd say 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
This time Jimmy sets off for a year on an engineering job where Pollyanna and the kids can't follow. He's an eleventh hour team member joining a high-profile expedition to the South Pole. I must say, he breaks the news to his wife in a tactless, un-Jimmylike way, along these lines. 'Chance of a lifetime... make or break career opportunity... but if you say the word, Pollyanna, I'll turn it down right now.' What does he expect her to do?
Alas, Pollyanna is true to character. Remember in Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms when she didn't tell Jimmy she was pregnant before he shipped off to the war? This time she hides info she's just discovered that their bank has gone broke. Jimmy assumes his family will live off his savings. It seems strange that he wouldn't check such a vital detail, even with just a day's notice, but oh well, whatever.
The upshot is that Pollyanna joins the jobseekers in Boston. A lot of her desperation makes no sense in the context of the whole series. Why look for modest rooms to rent, instead of staying with Aunt Ruth and Uncle John, who are loaded with dough? Even if the older couple are away on one of his research trips, isn't that all the more reason why their close family members should move into that beautiful mansion? But John and Ruth don't even get a mention in this story. Again, oh well, whatever.
Pollyanna ends up as the non-professional assistant of Dr Bennet, a psychiatrist. Her job will be regular chit chat with several selected patients to work her Glad Game magic on them. It sounds dodgy to readers in our era, for somebody with no training whatsoever in the mental health sector to be hired for such a responsibility, but this was the 1930s. Dr Bennet even sets her up in an apartment conducive to entertaining. In other words, Pollyanna will be getting paid for being herself.
At first I facepalmed, for Dr Bennet is doing the very thing Aunt Polly dreaded during Pollyanna's childhood; that is making Pollyanna feel self-conscious and put on the spot. Surely monetizing Pollyanna's gift will take away her beloved spontaneity, especially now that she has to write up formal reports on her new 'friends.' I expected it to destroy the whole spirit of the series, but somehow it works!
Pollyanna has a humble, caring attitude, holds the doctor's trust seriously, and the job takes a great toll on her. The patients themselves are an interesting bunch. There's a novelist, Rada Masters, who has a complex that people are stealing from her. Deborah Dangerfield is a poor little rich teenager who keeps running away from home, and bereft Mrs Garden keeps shoplifting baby clothes without even realizing. Then there's poor Mr Bagley, a transport company director whose wife and son both die in separate accidents on his vehicles! No wonder Pollyanna gets a bit burned out.
She has some wise insights about how the human mind works, after all her years of fascination with people.
Pollyanna reflects:
'Curbed and exercised for our entertainment, the imagination gives us pure happiness. Running wild though, and substituting itself and its manufactured dreams for reality... it plunges us into problems, despair, mental troubles. It's a thing like fire; capable of infinite good and comfort if harnessed and guided and understood, and capable of injuring us in uncounted ways if we permit it to rule us.'
And again:
'Sometimes we think strange things. They are like little sores on our minds, like measles or chicken pox. We get over them. They aren't natural things... don't last forever.'
Pollyanna's children are 13, 10 and 7, which is a few years younger than they were said to be in the previous book (Pollyanna's Castle in Mexico)! Elizabeth Borton messes up her own timeline, but the kids ring more true at these younger ages. Junior acquires a part time job, helping a newspaper office with his photography skills, and grapples with his own conscience crisis of whether or not it's ethical to throw in his lot with the snoopy paparazzi. Delicate Judy aspires to be a professional dancer. At this stage I wonder whether sturdy Ruth, the plain little plodder, will blossom out and eclipse her talented brother and sister in some remarkable way. Time will tell.
Here's a funny speculation. When Ruth assumes her daddy will be working close to Santa Claus, Junior and Judy exchange amused glances because she still believes in Santa Claus, yet neither seem to twig that she's chosen the wrong polar region. Since Elizabeth Borton has got so many other things wrong within her own stories, I can't help wondering if she realised it herself.
Overall, I enjoyed this far more than Elizabeth Borton's two previous Glad Books, in which she went off the rails, turning the stories into sensationalist adverts for their lavish settings. There's been some much-needed course correction here, and she's finally writing more in the initial spirit of Eleanor H. Porter and Harriet Lummis Smith. This book takes place in a normal city suburb with several people walking around beneath black clouds of depression and despair which Pollyanna helps them clear. Hooray, that's all we really want from a Pollyanna book. It's formulaic maybe, yet not predictable, because there is so much scope.
I'd say 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
April 14, 2022
Το είχα διαβάσει όταν ήμουν μικρή και το λάτρεψα
July 9, 2025
I really liked it up until the kidnapping. Times have definitely changed
December 8, 2023
So precious and sweet! I will go back and read the rest I have missed.
December 8, 2025
Ο σύζυγος της Πολυάννα, Τζίμι, φεύγει για ένα χρόνο για μια δουλειά μηχανικού σε μια αποστολή στον Νότιο Πόλο. Λίγο πριν φύγει, η Πολυάννα ανακαλύπτει ότι η τράπεζά τους έχει χρεοκοπήσει, αλλά του το κρύβει. Ως εκ τούτου, αναγκάζεται να αναζητήσει δουλειά στη Βοστώνη. Καταλήγει να εργάζεται ως μη επαγγελματίας βοηθός ενός ψυχιάτρου, του Δρ. Μπένετ. Η δουλειά της είναι να συνομιλεί με επιλεγμένους ασθενείς —μια μυθιστοριογράφο με σύνδρομο κλοπής ιδεών, μια πλούσια έφηβη που το σκάει, μια γυναίκα που κλέβει βρεφικά ρούχα και έναν διευθυντή μεταφορών που έχασε γυναίκα και γιο σε ατυχήματα με τα οχήματά του— και να εφαρμόζει το "Παιχνίδι της Χαράς" πάνω τους....
Η συγγραφέας μπερδεύει το χρονοδιάγραμμα της ίδιας της σειράς (τα παιδιά της Πολυάννα είναι νεότερα από ό,τι στο προηγούμενο βιβλίο). Υπάρχουν λογικά κενά στην πλοκή γιατί η Πολυάννα δεν μένει με την πλούσια θεία Ρουθ και τον θείο Τζον στη έπαυλή τους; Ο τρόπος που ο Τζίμι ανακοινώνει το ταξίδι του ήταν αγενής και εκτός χαρακτήρα.
Η ιδέα της "αποζημίωσης" του χαρίσματος της Πολυάννα (να πληρώνεται για να είναι ο εαυτός της) φαινόταν αρχικά αμφιλεγόμενη και απειλούσε τον αυθορμητισμό της, αλλά τελικά λειτούργησε χάρη στην ταπεινή της στάση. Η συγγραφέας ενσωματώνει ενδιαφέρουσες ιδέες για τη λειτουργία του ανθρώπινου νου και τη διαφορά μεταξύ της ελεγχόμενης φαντασίας και της ανεξέλεγκτης (η αναλογία με τη φωτιά).
Το μόνο θετικό είναι ότι το βιβλίο δεν ήταν απλώς προβλέψιμο. Υπάρχει αρκετό πεδίο εφαρμογής για το "Παιχνίδι της Χαράς" σε έναν κανονικό προαστιακό χώρο γεμάτο απόγνωση. Η Μπόρτον κατάφερε τελικά να γράψει ένα βιβλίο που πλησιάζει περισσότερο στο πνεύμα της αρχικής Πολυάννα.
Συνολικά, η βαθμολογία μου είναι 3 στα 5 αστέρια. Ήταν μια ευχάριστη επιστροφή στον κόσμο της Πολυάννα, πιο ουσιαστική από τις προηγούμενες προσπάθειες της Μπόρτον, αλλά με ορισμένες αδυναμίες στην πλοκή και τη συνέχεια των χαρακτήρων.
Συνολική Εμπειρία: Ευχάριστη επιστροφή στην αρχική ατμόσφαιρα της σειράς.
Η συγγραφέας μπερδεύει το χρονοδιάγραμμα της ίδιας της σειράς (τα παιδιά της Πολυάννα είναι νεότερα από ό,τι στο προηγούμενο βιβλίο). Υπάρχουν λογικά κενά στην πλοκή γιατί η Πολυάννα δεν μένει με την πλούσια θεία Ρουθ και τον θείο Τζον στη έπαυλή τους; Ο τρόπος που ο Τζίμι ανακοινώνει το ταξίδι του ήταν αγενής και εκτός χαρακτήρα.
Η ιδέα της "αποζημίωσης" του χαρίσματος της Πολυάννα (να πληρώνεται για να είναι ο εαυτός της) φαινόταν αρχικά αμφιλεγόμενη και απειλούσε τον αυθορμητισμό της, αλλά τελικά λειτούργησε χάρη στην ταπεινή της στάση. Η συγγραφέας ενσωματώνει ενδιαφέρουσες ιδέες για τη λειτουργία του ανθρώπινου νου και τη διαφορά μεταξύ της ελεγχόμενης φαντασίας και της ανεξέλεγκτης (η αναλογία με τη φωτιά).
Το μόνο θετικό είναι ότι το βιβλίο δεν ήταν απλώς προβλέψιμο. Υπάρχει αρκετό πεδίο εφαρμογής για το "Παιχνίδι της Χαράς" σε έναν κανονικό προαστιακό χώρο γεμάτο απόγνωση. Η Μπόρτον κατάφερε τελικά να γράψει ένα βιβλίο που πλησιάζει περισσότερο στο πνεύμα της αρχικής Πολυάννα.
Συνολικά, η βαθμολογία μου είναι 3 στα 5 αστέρια. Ήταν μια ευχάριστη επιστροφή στον κόσμο της Πολυάννα, πιο ουσιαστική από τις προηγούμενες προσπάθειες της Μπόρτον, αλλά με ορισμένες αδυναμίες στην πλοκή και τη συνέχεια των χαρακτήρων.
Συνολική Εμπειρία: Ευχάριστη επιστροφή στην αρχική ατμόσφαιρα της σειράς.
July 14, 2012
Love Pollyanna's philosophy of life - the glad game!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews