Emily of New Moon (Emily, #1) in Reading Through The Year With L. M. Montgomery (2022-23)

Apr 01, 2011 Peggy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: comfort-books, desert-island-essentials, letters-diaries, lm_montgomery

Though perhaps not as famous as Anne of Green Gables, this is my favorite L.M. Montgomery book (and one of my favorite books of all time).

May 2016: Re-reading for the Kindred Spirits group readalong.

August 2021 Reread for the Litsy #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead. Still my very favorite book.

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Sep 14, 2022 Elizabeth Meadows rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books-2022

This was a reread, but this time on audio. Such a wonderful story!

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Jun 05, 2016 Tracey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favourites, owned-books

This is a gem of a book. Emily is a girl to love and like. The book is full of many wises words and spiritual 'flashes' just as Emily herself receives these 'flashes' or intimation of another world.

"Death isn't terrible. The universe is full of love and spring is comes in everywhere and in death you open and shut a door."

'Emily felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great invisible tenderness.'

'Emily with her instinctive capacity of sizing up people she met, fe ...more

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Feb 11, 2019 Diana Maria rated it really liked it

Shelves: honey-for-a-woman-s-heart

Dear me, I found myself having such mixed feelings about this book that I don't know how to start my review....it will be downhill and not uphill, because I absolutely loved the first two thirds of the book, but the last bit really had me scanning the pages just to get through it, I hated it so. So the first part of the review will be all the nasty parts I wholeheartedly disliked and then with the parts which made me give this book 4 stars, so as to end in a fairer note.
The parts I disliked so Dear me, I found myself having such mixed feelings about this book that I don't know how to start my review....it will be downhill and not uphill, because I absolutely loved the first two thirds of the book, but the last bit really had me scanning the pages just to get through it, I hated it so. So the first part of the review will be all the nasty parts I wholeheartedly disliked and then with the parts which made me give this book 4 stars, so as to end in a fairer note.
The parts I disliked so were those which stated the author's views on what constitutes an emotional and intelligent maturation, which a pack of unsensible (deranged more likely) people had managed to bring upon her, indirectly through their abominable gossip, scandals and "bookderivedupliftingtexts delivered by a weird, oddly-balanced fellow to a twelve year old. I'm twice and little bit more Emily's age she had in this book and I cringe at all the bullying she had had to get, in order to "grow-up and mature". How could she have the nerve to rip the loveliness of childhood from her after that spiteful visit to Wyther Grange, defiling her emotional innocence, I cannot fathom. Oh, that man!!
Another problem I have with this story is the complete lack from beginning to end of sensible adults. Not one decent adult on the span of 340 pages. Dickens had the most abominable of characters, but he had loads of sensible, dear folks, creating a healthy balance in his wonderful works. There seems to be a stifling pressure everywhere you turn, everybody having fits of "explosive anger", dissatisfaction over one thing or another...the more I read the less I liked it. It seems as if she ran out of reasonable character types after putting a great many in Anne's books. It is true that one cannot live in "cotton wool" but to have so much dirt thrown at a girl out of folly, disregarding better sense to satisfy's one's perversity (Aunt Nancy does a great job at that, spiteful woman) is just unbearable and extremelly disturbing. Not to mention a loon widower, with an fanatical mother who hates everything her son loves out of stupid jealousy and disturbing possessive nature, a drunk teacher (mind, with excellent teaching skills), weird priests (which really made me uncomfortable all over), downright mean relatives puffed up with ignorance and pride, neighbours with a weird sense of humour, foulmouthed girls (Ilse would win the grand prize for her language), a deranged adult who dreams of a little girl being his bride one day, when he’s old and stupid and she in the glory of her twenties….I cannot stand the name of Dean Priest, and here I go and type it up!!). I cringe all over again when I’m writing this.
So on to the second part of the review, where I put only the best and glorious parts of the book, because they abound in the first half of the book towards the last third of it. At the beginning of the story I sat and asked myself, oddly enough, what I liked about Anne:)) and I decided it must be her lovable character, her winning ways, her kindness, her sharp sense of the good, wholly and strong, and her genuine imagination. I must have liked the books’ hopeful message, of beauty, of goodness, of strong friendships, of kindness underneath calloused hearts (something which you do not find in almost any character in Emily’s book). In Emily these are not themes which the author chooses to put forth and analyse, and life is not dealt with in such a heartwarming fashion as in Anne. I have been forwarned by good friends about the darker mode of the story. In Anne, her imagination was her companion, her way of making sense of the world through wonder, through whimsy, through delight in the beautiful around her. In Emily her imagination is her anchor. Anne had already got a glimpse of the Celestial City in Green Gables and the loving family she had found there, after having a dark childhood the author did well not to dwell on. Emily has imagination as a companion in a far longer, more ardeous journey that does not end at the beginning of the book as in Anne, but hers actually begins then, at the ending of the first chapter when her “sentence” is cast upon her in a cruel way by a senseless woman who pervaded in all the adults throughout the book. I did not like Emily from the start, she is not so lovable as Anne, but from the last two paragraphs of chapter one she had me enticed, and I kept feeling for a while that I was reading myself out of the book (creepily delightful feeling). While Anne is the water, Emily is the fire, the former a sweet rose, the latter a red peony with its persistent fragrance, one the sunlight, the other the moonlight. Although I am no fire or any kind of flower, I find myself relating more to Emily than to Anne, the latter having sizzled my dormant imagination, once, many years ago. Many of Emily’s ruminations have found echoes in my heart, as well as her vivid imagination. How, even when confronted with “the critical gaze of sixteen stranger eyes” she could find comfort in her imagination, trying to find the right words to describe them, to find for each the exact words to picture them in ink, was marvelous to behold. It just makes them all so powerless when you try to describe that which you fear, trying to paint it as accurately as frighteningly possible, breaking free from their clutches and using “your other eyes than those of sense” to see “the marvelous world behind the veil” giving you “courage and hope”.
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Apr 09, 2018 Ashley Jacobson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: to-read-fiction

This was just as fun, if not more fun than Anne! Emily is a more relatable character. I liked her depth, with the good and bad, excitement and disappointment. The story was fun, but more dark than Anne, so better for a slightly older reader.

Aunt Elizabeth frustrated me, but Emily is a great character who knows when to stand up for herself and stand her ground. Emily knows how to find happiness is terrible situations. There is a lot we can learn from her. She exemplifies charity and friendship a ...more

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Mar 05, 2015 Fiona rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, children-s, children-s-classic

This book has a very different flavour to the Anne books. In many ways it has a darker undertone - though this is not something I remember noticing when I read it as a child - which I think is mainly because the characters are more complex, having a greater mix of good characteristics and great failings, and often scarred in some way. And I think it would probably be fair to say that some of them appear to have no redeeming qualities. This is not a negative. In fact, I think I found this book mo ...more

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