و بالاخره پایان سه‌گانه‌ی امیلی :)
از این مجموعه می‌تونم به عنوان نجات دهنده‌ی تابستونی یاد کنم، چون روزهای گرم و آفتابی رو برام دل‌نشین کرد. این کتاب نسبت به دو جلد دیگه متفاوت‌تر بود و بیشتر با امیلی همذات پنداری می‌کردم. اون لحظات تنهایی و دور بودن از دوستاش، حسرت خوردن و گذروندن روزها..
البته خیلی از دستش حرص خوردم. غرور ماری‌گونه‌اش خیلی جاها کار دستش داد. حس می‌کنم صفحات آخر نویسنده فقط یه پایان خوش هول هولکی تحویلمون داد.
دوست داشتم اندکی بهتر و جادویی‌تر بشه.
اما احساس من به این کتاب‌ وصف نشدنیه. پنج ستاره‌ی طلایی تقدیم به امیلی برد استار، ایلزه برنلی، پری میلر، تدی کنت و تمامی شخصیت‌هایی که کتاب رو برام شیرین‌تر کردن.

Wow. What a disappointment. I started the series this summer and thought the first book was charming and lovely and I looked forward to more, and then the second made me wonder how Montgomery was going to wrap it all up. I was less enamoured with the second, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt, thinking perhaps it suffered from the sort of 'bridge' story that's necessary in trilogies.

But wow. The story just devolved into a silly steaming pile that I'm kinda surprized I got through. It reads almost like a serial... like Montgomery contrived a couple of situations and played each one out in its turn. I felt like she'd totally run out of ideas for this group of characters and was finishing this series only for the money. It felt like she didn't care about them, and so neither did I.

Even the points that were made in the first book, like the finding of the diamond, which I expected would be a huge thing were just barely there stories and no one in the book cared, and so neither did I. The whole thing was wrapped in a couple pages. I thought it'd be a way bigger story.

Montgomery also pretty much got rid of all the supporting characters, having them show up only periodically throughout the novel, and in the case of Ilse, turn into complete idiots. This left Emily with nothing to do, so instead we have a romance and near-marriage to a guy who used to be friends with Emily's *dad*. Creepy, much?

The whole thing was so stupid that by the time we got to the end of the book and it finally resolved in the way everyone knew it was going to resolve in spite of the pointless twists and turns and unexplained and barely explored supernatural abilities Emily possessed, I just didn't give a damn. Emily could have married Old Kelly and it wouldn't have made the story any less stupid.

The series was like The Matrix films. Watch and enjoy the first. Forget the rest were ever made.

Oh man... where to even begin with this book? Let's just say that it was an excruciating read at times. I'm so glad that I was allowed to rant out my immediate reaction to this book to a friend because otherwise I don't think I could write such a composed review. I went into this book with such hopes, and I think it was that above all else that made this an unsatisfactory read. So far I had adored reading Emily's growth as a person and as a writer through her dealings with the Murray clan and her friends in New Moon and Shrewsbury. I felt it was a charming piece of slice-of-life, filled with fun vignettes, even when it went slightly into the absurd  such as when she had her second sight moments.  But overall, everything felt grounded and realistic, at least in the most important terms: emotionally. I was so excited to see this book tackle Emily's early adulthood - learning to live with her career ambitions and her love.

And then I actually read this book. I expected Emily's writing ambitions to grow and flourish even if she didn't immediately succeed. In fact, I was expecting a struggle, a honing of her craft. The ambition side of this novel, however, was so entirely unsatisfying.  Watching her confidence and dreams being torn from her by one of the worst, most godawful, selfish, and manipulative characters in all of literature, was excruciating. When Emily finally perseveres as a writer and makes progress, the importance of her writing in the novel seems to diminish. The biggest insult to Emily was that the story instead decided to focus on the resolution of the completely unsatisfying romance.

I honestly don't know what to say about the romance. I'm sure someone could appreciate it more, and I so dearly wanted to because Montgomery still writes so well in a way that makes your heart ache. I wouldn't have wanted to tear out my hair so many times if I wasn't so very emotionally invested. But what it comes down to is that I just can't abide by romances that are full of too much overwrought drama and are perpetuated by amazing miscommunication issues and absurd pride. Not to mention the use of more than one ridiculously contrived twist in the romance storyline. And when things finally, finally do come together at the end, it was so anticlimatic and handled in such a relatively few paragraphs that I was left feeling not much of anything. It also doesn't help that I never really felt Teddy had the screen time to come into his own as a character. He felt pretty blank.

When I actually repeated the story back to my friend in a hazy induced rant I realized just how maudalin the storyline actually was, and I was sad for it. The writing is still top-notch, as are most of the characterizations, but I just couldn't stand the direction she took this story. I think this is going to be a case where I'm just going to live with a different version of a series's conclusion in my head.

دوست داشتم هر سه کتاب رو بخونم و بعد ریویو بنویسم.
حدودا یه ماهه که هروقت فرصتی پیدا می‌کنم و از درس و کار و ورزش خسته میشم امیلی می‌خونم. خیلی دوست داشتم سریع‌تر هر سه کتاب رو بخونم و بفهمم آخرش چی میشه اما خوشحالم این کارو نکردم. روند کتابخونیم رو آهسته کردم و از هر صفحه و هر جمله‌‌ی این کتاب لذت بردم. به خاطر آوردم که چطور تا دوران دبیرستان هرروز می‌نوشتم و شعر می‌گفتم و آرزوی نویسندگی رو داشتم و این برای من ارزشمندترین پیامد خوندن این کتاب بود.
شاید من هیچ وقت نتونم بنویسم اما تمام خیالپردازی‌ها و حتی جرقه‌های امیلی رو درک می‌کنم و از این که مونتگمری اون سر دنیا تونسته شخصیتی خلق کنه که احساسات دوران کودکی و نوجوانی من رو تحربه کرده خوشحال شدم.
کتاب اول پر از توصیفات نوستالژیک بود. ابتدای کتاب یه مقدار عجیب شروع شد و حدودا ۴۰-۵۰ صفحه طول کشید تا با فضای کتاب «دوست» بشم. همین باعث شد بهش ۴ ستاره یدم. اما ادامه‌ی داستان عالی بود. امیلی کوچولو واقعا خوب توصیف شده بود. اون بخش دوستی با رودا عااااالی بود! هر دختری حتما همچین دوست ناجوری تو دوران مدرسه داشته!
فضای کتاب دوم خیلی شبیه دوران مدرسه‌ی خودم بود. بدجنسی‌ اطرافیان، سختی‌ها، فضای تاریک محل اقامت و...
تو ذهن من نیومون و بلرواتر مثل بهشت بود و شروزبری مثل یه شهر شلوغ. حتی توصیف سرزمین ایستادگی هم برام چندان جذاب نبود، مثل یه پارک بود وسط شهر!
نمی‌دونم چرا کتاب دوم چندان به دلم ننشست. یعنی کتاب اول و سوم رو خیلییی بیشتر دوست دارم. اما بهرحال کتاب دوم واقعا لیاقت ۴ ستاره رو داشت.
کتاب سوم خیلی عجیب بود. اوایل کتاب سوم حس می‌کردم قراره به این کتاب ۳ ستاره بدم. اما حدودا یک سوم کتاب رو که خوندم به این نتیجه رسیدم که لایق ۵ ستاره‌ست. روند بزرگ شدن امیلی رو کاملا میشد حس کرد. حالا امیلی ۲۰ ساله هم سن خود من بود و من کاملا درکش می‌کردم. تمام توصیفاتش در مورد پاییزها و زمستونای سرد و طولانی نیومون رو درک می‌کردم. حس تنهایی و دور افتادگی امیلی رو درک می‌کردم. همه چیز در مورد این کتاب عالی بود. با این کتاب خندیدم و گریه کردم... اما پایان کتاب اونقد سرهم بندی شده بود که با خودم فکر کردم لایق ۵ ستاره نیست.
انگار نویسنده عجله داشت که این داستان زیبا رو سریعا تموم کنه و من از این عجله اصلا خوشم نیومد. دلم میخواست کتاب سوم حجمی مثل کتاب اول داشته باشه و همونقد دقیق همه چیز رو توصیف کرده باشه و برای پایان کتاب حسابی وقت گذاشته باشه.
بهرحال امیلی یه انتخاب عالی برای گذروندن قرنطینه‌س. میشه با این مجموعه چند ساعتی رو از زندگی آلوده و کرونایی دور شد و بین افراها و صنوبرهای جزیره‌ی پرنس ادوارد قدم زد و درخشش بلر واتر رو تماشا کرد. واقعا کاش می‌شد یه مدتی جزیره‌ی پرنس ادوارد زندگی کنم :)

After two strong books, L.M. Montgomery ruins the finish in this book. People do horrible things to her and break her heart, and she finishes as a very weak version of herself. I can only take so many "miscommunications" as plot devices, and this story has a few too many. Also, we are presented with the fact that Emily loves only Teddy Kent, and can't possibly marry anyone else, but in spite of the fact that Emily really is a well written character, we know very little about Teddy Kent, and so it's hard to believe the fact that they were meant to be together in the end. The first two books deserved a better ending than this.

Never thought this Emily series could be so dark and sad but I love how desperate this made me feel. It captured perfectly the growing pains of a young woman. Adult life seems so much more exiting and fun when you are young and when everything is still open.

"Well, I never could have believed that a pack of lies could sound as much like the real truth as that book does."

Like the handsome, ambitious boys-next-door that L.M. Montgomery's heroines love to love, Emily Byrd Starr had the bald luck of getting there first. She is the author avatar for me, and I will accept no substitutes until the day I die: Nate Zuckerman, Grady Tripp, Charlie Citrine, Harriet Vane, Briony Tallis, Stephen Daedalus, Buddy Glass, Leo Gursky, Tom Healy... it was fun, but you can let yourselves out.

There is no faster way for my eyes to glaze over reading a book synopsis than to read that the MC "is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork." Mostly because writing about writing has already been done a dozen times well and a few thousand times badly, but also because none of these other writer-characters seem half as alive or full of single-minded drive and joy for their vocation as Montgomery's precocious, proud, witty yet dreamy young Canadian authoress.

All three books of the Emily series were written in the 1920s, and although they take place prior to what was then known as the Great War, this provenance shows between the lines. Book 3, Emily's Quest, is, despite the happy ending, one of Montgomery's darkest, rivaling even her devastating World War I novel, Rilla of Ingleside.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (god-fearing Christian, minister's wife, creator of plucky heroines who teach uptight spinsters How To Love) writes knowingly here of the secret pleasures and warped mind games of codependent relationships, of sleepless nights spent staring into the abyss of one's own future, of arrogance, of death, of bitterness, and of the claustrophobia of compromise.

Handsome, ambitious, boy-next-door Teddy Kent spends much of the book painting and flirting his way through Montreal and Europe, leaving Emily to figure out how to build a life around the day to day grind of writing fiction alone. Emily's Quest ends up being a pretty straightforward hero's quest, but Montgomery always finds just the right detail or spin on things to meld the rigorous structure of the hero's quest seamlessly to her rural Canadian late Victorian milieu.

We begin with an enthusiastic, optimistic bite of the apple, "No more cambric tea," Emily declares, explaining that she has finally been deemed by her head guardian, Aunt Elizabeth, old enough to have caffeine.

Soon enough Emily's enthusiasm and optimism are tested, and tested, and tested. Emily loses two of her biggest mentors and champions—one to death and one to disappointed passion. The rejection slips "damning with faint praise" pile up, and inspiration is increasingly hard to come by. Emily begins to believe that she is just a moderately successful scribbler of pot-boilers, and nothing more.

I love how quiet and slow the turnaround is, how ironic and bittersweet and true to Emily's personality and values. When Emily's first book is published, we are treated to a delightful rundown of the critical responses, paired with her relations' pricelessly folksy attempts at interpretation:

"'This book lacks spontaneity. It is saccharine and melodramatic, mawkish and naive.'

'I know I fell into the well,' said Cousin Jimmy pitifully. 'Is that why I can't make head or tail out of that?'"

There is so much great writing advice in this book, both of the page-level and existential kind. Montgomery gets writing. She knows how to describe writing, how to show us that Emily is a great writer, how to show us what kinds of success are attainable and what are not for a great writer, and how lonely writing has to be despite its occasional thrills of connection.

Montgomery gets people too, all different kinds: bad fathers, brides with cold feet, solicitous women who want to make you in their own image, young men on the make.

And if you don't like her happy ending, well, Montgomery has already had some fun with you some 100 pages back, via the character of loony fellow writer Mark Greaves:

n  "'[Y]ou must learn never to write happy endings—never. I will teach you. I will teach you the beauty and artistry of sorrow and incompleteness.'"n

Teach Lucy Maud Montgomery Emily Byrd Starr about writing? Ha! Montgomery's prose can be purple as a plum, but there is nothing left to teach a writer who knows just how much rope to give her characters to hang themselves with.

L.M. Montgomery may not have loved the last two books in this series as much as the first… but, I cannot sing its praises enough.

There was a sadness to Emily’s Quest, unlike the others and it makes me wonder what Montgomery felt when she was writing it. The loneliness that Emily experiences, almost until the very end.

But, like all of Montgomery’s other stories–this one doesn’t fail to be uplifting at the end, even if it is short and sweet.

Emily will forever be one of my favorite book heroines.

Not the end that I was expecting.

5 stars

HOLY CRAP.
THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL.

And also really unnecessarily emotional. But OH MY GOSH MY SHIPS AND EVERYTHING. It all ended so so perfectly so here's the reasons why.

Emily Byrd Starr is still my favorite female character of ALL TIME. I adore her for every reason. Her flaws and her strengths. Her writing and her trials of life. The way she loves her friends and the boy she believes will never love her in return. Let's just say that I've never related more. I feel like Emily is me. And I hurt just as much as she did as a result. n  "For writing, to Emily Byrd Starr, was not primarily a matter of worldly lucre or laurel crown. It was something she had to do. A thing-an idea-whether of beaut or ugliness tortured her until it was written out."n Me. SAMEEEEE.

And then there's my ships. Which did end the way I wanted too...even if there was SO MUCH UNNECESSARY PAIN ALONG THE WAY. Ahem.
And so many good quotes. And SPOILERS: But it took wayyyy to long for Ilse and Perry but their slow-burn hate to love is beautiful.
And then...Emily and Teddy. My loves. The childhood best friends who took their sweet, torturing time coming to terms with their love for each other. This quote had me in tears while I was furiously underlining it: n  "She knew, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery, that she had seen Teddy--had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just simply and just as surely, that she loved him-had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being."n *weeps forever*

END OF SPOILERS.

Now for the pain...because this book was painful. While Emily of New Moon has you feeling sympathetic and angry with Emily, and Emily Climbs has you growing up right along side her in a more comical way, Emily's Quest is an emotional roller coaster. It's a cry fest people. One thing right after another sends my flailing. (I had to put the book down several times so that I wouldn't RIP ALL THE PAGES OUT.) But the pain was good, in way. It grew Emily, the other characters, and her relationships. It brought about more satisfaction in the ending. And although miserable at times, it kept me thoroughly invested in the story.

But still. There's this about Ilse and Emily:
n  "For disguise the fact as we will, when friends, even the closest-perhaps the more because of that very closeness-meet again after a separation there is always a chill, lesser greater of change. Neither finds the other quite the same. This is natural and inevitable. Human nature is ever growing and retrogressing-never stationary."n Their friendship is not the same as the first two books, mainly because both have grown up. It was a bitter sweet feeling reading about them. The two girls still love each other fiercely, just not in the same completely trusting way.

AND THEN THERE'S DEAN FREAKING PREIST. I screamed. A lot. Because I despise him. Despise him for not truly loving Emily because he shames her writing because he is jealous of it. Despise him for lying to her, telling her that her story was trash when it was wonderful. Despise him for being there and caring for her when nobody else would...because it made her dependent on him. Despise him, once again for not recognizing that a writer isn't just a "writer." It's something that's in us, that we are bound to, that doesn't go away and that keeps us sane and neutral. I felt so much rage at Dean for everything he did basically. And somehow, in book 2, I didn't pick up on the fact that Dean Priest is 15+ years older than Emily, which isn't a bad thing but what??? Nooooooo.

*deep breathing*

But...it grows Emily and ultimately, their friendship. It makes Emily more determined, in the end, to pursue writing and publishing her word.

All the other pain was in Emily's longing for Teddy which was so dreadfully sad and something like what I've experienced. I just love them so much and it hurt. There were also a couple deaths of characters I had grown to love in this book.

Other than the splendid quotes I've already shared there are also these two:
"The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of the things that did."
And Mr. Carpenter says this wonderful thing as well: "Emily, promise me-that you'll never write-to please anybody-but yourself."

So yes, this whole trilogy is going on my favorites list forever and I will recommend it to everyone forever. It's so tragically beautiful. And everyone should read it and cry with me.

[close] I've given the third of Montgomery's Emily books four stars simply for nostalgia's sake, since it was actually the first one I read. Yet as I read through these again and again, I find this third one to be the darkest and most depressing. Emily has given up a chance to work in publishing in the U.S. to stay at New Moon and write -- while this is her choice (and the author's) what a book that would have made, to see Emily in the world!

Plus the author makes the years pass by like fluid and, through a couple of misunderstandings and Emily's ridiculous pride, seems to torture her characters needlessly, finishing up with a rushed happy ending. Ugh. Her writing is still beautiful but nothing much happens, and my one complaint about Montgomery is that all her characters are afflicted with the vice of pride, and it seriously gets old. On the other hand it does teach the reader the value of good communication, no matter the century! If you like the first two you ought to read this one too. Just have patience with it.

I know in my heart that I cannot adequately express how I feel about this book.

The series as a whole is amazing. I have never read a story where I so wholly absorbed a character's feelings as I did Emily Starr's. And I must say, the final book in the trilogy broke my heart over, and over, and over. I felt so much anguish over this book.

But L.M. Montgomery done something special. Reading this alongside Anne of Green Gables, it is evident how much her writing has evolved since the Anne series (1908 versus the 1920s). Montgomery cut back a lot of her flowery passages seen in Anne and brought forth challenging and bold themes into the Emily books. You can see how the changing attitudes of the Roaring Twenties influence Montgomery's ideals in that the books contain new themes like sexuality, depression, and human cruelty. This book particularly introduces a number of characters that are not to be simplified. I don't think I will ever be able to figure out how I feel about Dean Priest.

There are so many things I wish I could say about this book and this series, but reading it was honestly kind of overwhelming in a way that makes it difficult for me to find words for why it hit me the way it did. That phenomenon is a particular gift of Montgomery's because it is evident that she felt things keenly in her life. Her ability to manifest those feelings in her characters is all too effective. While I think this is possibly her strongest work, I don't think it would appeal to a wide audience, especially if one enters into it expecting something with the levity of Anne of Green Gables.