Отака "Емілі" мені подобається - менше сімейних цінностей, більше навчання та писання. Загалом не маю нічого категорично проти першого пункту, але Монтгомері настільки тяжіє до певних сюжетних шаблонів, що оповідь вже бува зависає на межі саркастичного самоцитування, але чомусь побоюється її перетнути. Натомість тема шаленого снобізму "перших колоністів" розкрита уповні і дуже не по-доброму.

Друга книжка - це вже чесний янґ-адалт за сучасними стандартами (Емілі від 14 до 17), що суттєво впливає на проблематику. Але небуквально - тут навіть про дівочу конкуренцію більше, ніж про перше кохання (і славабогині!) - зате багацько сторінок присвячено соціальним тонкощам (як з тим снобізмом) та тому, як Емілі оцінює власні шанси "вбудувати себе" в прийнятні рамки (і чи варто це взагалі робити). Ну, і головне: Емілі - це моя ідеальна Енн. Ключовою темою роману таки стали письменницькі амбіції та варіанти емансипації за їхньою допомогою. У деяких випадках автобіографічність рятує Всесвіт - вправи у стилі, заробляння світською хронікою містечкового масштабу, спроби прилаштувати поезії та оповідання у журнали, перші гонорари... Про зародження кар'єри юної письменниці авторка пише з розумінням, ніжністю і стриманою іронією, що змушують палко вболівати за те, щоб у цієї дівчинки все вийшло!

November 7th

Last night, I've been busy crying over a decision i didn't make: i asked myself, if you go back in time, would you still do it?
I, desperately weeping, answered "no". I hate to confess that things i did, were wrong. Then i cried much more harshly.
Oh, dear what a tragedy. Our teacher said what we know about tragedy, is not exactly what it is. Isn't it, really?
The other morning, i met a fair old lady. She asked me for help. I helped her. I wanted to ask her if there was an answer for me. I wanted to ask if she could remember her 18th, when she was full, full of mistakes. What happened to your sins ma'am?
But i didn't؛ what a loss.
How dreadful it is to live this pointless. I dyed my hair so that i could feel something. I still cannot understand a thing.
I assume isolation would the answer.

توی این جلد از امیلی یاد گرفتم که فقط باید خودتو باور داشته باشی...بقیه کم کم بهت ایمان میارن.‌..
(اگه به من بود اسم این جلدو میذاشتم امیلی و سرزمین ایستادگی)
_____
من دارم با این سه گانه زندگی میکنم

Review of The Emily Novels: Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily's Quest, which I'll refer to as Childhood, Girlhood, and Womanhood, to cut down on the repetition of Emily's name. Since the books are classic, I'm not hiding the review, but as a forewarning, there are spoilers here. I delayed before finally reviewing the books, to make sure I would do them justice, as far as my powers of reflection go.

Some of the best reading of my life, twice. I read the series in adolescence and again in adulthood to examine some of the literature that influenced my thought processes about growing up, back while I was growing up, and though I was introduced to Anne of Green Gables first—-by way of television, videos, and hearing so much about her—-I read all of Emily's books before I read Anne's. Black-haired, purplish-gray-eyed Emily is similar to red-haired, gray-eyed Anne in the fact that neither girl is generally agreed upon to be "beautiful," so to speak (Emily not being beautiful so much as her countenance makes one think of beautiful things), but they're the kind of girls people enjoy looking at anyway. What's more, both girls are orphans and writers. Go figure. It's important to note, though, that Emily takes her writing further than Anne does.

Emily's series also resembles Anne's in the sentiment that there's a certain bleakness in the fact that childhood must inevitably pass and, alas, humans who live long enough are destined (or doomed?) to become adults at some point. Did Montgomery truly feel that way? I did find Womanhood, the shortest of the novels, to be the dreariest of the three. Even where Childhood and Girlhood have chapter titles like "Living Epistles," "A Weaver of Dreams," "The Woman Who Spanked the King," and "A Valley of Vision," the Womanhood chapters are Roman numeral-numbered and otherwise nameless, with more numerals rather starkly hailing the separation of sections within the chapters. However, I suspect that a number of Emily's circumstances that bring on the dreariness don't necessarily have to follow adulthood as a rule, though they happen to follow hers. Moreover, Womanhood does have its bright points, and I was so into Emily's world by that time, I couldn't help relishing the third novel in a different but equal way as the first two.

Ben Stahl's depictions of Emily on the Laurel-Leaf/Bantam book editions are among my favorite pieces of book cover art in that they do indeed say something accurate about Emily in each of the stages of her life we're told about, particularly in her facial expressions. And how could one not love Girlhood's cover, with all of that deep blue, moonbeams on Emily's hair, and the evening lights out across the water?

Emily, Teddy, Ilse, and Perry work well together as characters, and it's lovely seeing them come up as a bunch, with all of their various talents and dreams. I understand Perry's early fixation with Emily, and Ilse's lifelong attachment to Perry, but I'm not wholly satisfied with the way Ilse and Perry get together. I feel for the young man, as Ilse is so hard on him when his apparent "Stovepipe Town"-ness reveals itself, and it's touching and even relieving to learn that Ilse's behavior is the result of her being in love with Perry all this time. And, for lack of more suitable wording, I'm absolutely pumped about the way Ilse up and jilts Teddy on what is supposed to be her wedding day when she thinks Perry is dying. Go for it, Ilse! Yet, I'm not convinced that Perry feels for Ilse all that she does for him, at least not as intensely. But, she will have her Perry in the end, that's all there is to it, and imagining that the two of them will make an admirable pair in the long run, I've resolved to be content with how their coupling finally comes about, after so many bumps along the way.

This four-character bunch is indeed led by a worthy and unforgettable protagonist: Emily, naturally. Her father, Douglas, is only alive for the first two chapters of Childhood, but the strength of his relationship with his daughter is firmly established in their short time together, and Douglas's personal reflections about Emily set the tone for the course of her journey. "She will love deeply—-she will suffer terribly—-she will have glorious moments to compensate—-as I have had." For the rest of the series, we find Emily engrossed in just that: the depths of loving and suffering, and moments of glory that make it all worth it. The aspect of her childhood that gets me the most is her letter writing to her deceased father: not the fact that she writes to him but that she eventually stops doing it, all without my notice until the letters are referred to later on. It gets me because it's so like the progression through our lives as children, those things that we set aside and go on living without, whether or not we can pinpoint the exact day and time the setting aside took place.

In some ways, I've related to Emily more than to any other character I've read. I understand what "the flash" is like for her. I'm just as embarrassed as she is when she unknowingly goes to class in high school with a mustache someone drew on her face while she was asleep. Sure, Emily may have a gift; she has something, to be sure, but it would be best if people didn't call her psychic, at least not to her face. Then, there's her life as a writer. I indubitably get that. Beyond her having to get over her tendency to use an overabundance of italics, that moment in Girlhood, "In the Old John House," speaks volumes to me.

"I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically, with a new, unaccountable gaiety of voice and manner. ..."What will you give me for a dream?"

Emily turned around—-stared at him for a moment—-then forgot thrills and spells and everything else... ...she saw unrolling before her a dazzling idea for a story—-complete even to the title—-A Seller of Dreams.

...She would not try to write it yet—-oh, not for years. She must wait until time and experience had made of her pen an instrument capable of doing justice to her conception...

I know I'm not the only writer or artist who has ever had that ethereal moment, when just one, fleeting something—-a chill, an echo, the click of a lamp, a question (What will you give me for a dream?)—-ignites the flame of an entire work that blazes suddenly into consciousness. There's nothing like it on earth. It's beyond a shame that Dean's fear leads him to lie about the quality of A Seller of Dreams when Emily finally writes it as a woman, and she consequently burns it, not knowing until much later that Dean has deceived her.

Now, speaking of the immensely memorable Dean (how sad that his nickname around town should be "Jarback" for his malformed shoulder and slight limp), his part in the story is likely why my heart ached more, with both pleasure and pain, reading this story than any other fiction I'd read before, the first time I read the series. I guess it surprised me a little, during my own process of shifting from my childhood to girlhood, to know exactly what Dean means when, after he saves Emily's life in Childhood, he muses to her, "I think I'll wait for you," though he's a man of thirty-six. Wait for her he does, nevertheless, loving her in a way she'll never be able to love him in return, as much as she cares for him, and there's something so compelling and even dear in their relationship, despite the fact that he'll be forever unable to eclipse Teddy's place in Emily's soul. I couldn't help but ache for Dean, especially at points like reading a Girlhood journal entry of Emily's:

" 'Well, you know long ago you promised you would teach me how to make love artistically.'

"I said it in a teasing way, just for a joke. But Dean seemed suddenly to become very much in earnest.

" 'Are you ready for the teaching?' he said, bending forward.

"For one crazy moment I really thought he was going to kiss me. ...all at once I thought of Teddy. I didn't know what to say... ...I went in—-and Dean went home. I watched him from my window, limping down the lane. He seemed very lonely, and all at once I felt terribly sorry for him. ...I forget there must be another side to his life. I can fill only such a little corner of it. The rest must be very empty."

Yes, Emily thinks to herself that Dean "is not hurt any longer" when he gives her the deed to the Disappointed House as a wedding present for her and Teddy, at the close of Womanhood. Emily thinks it, but I don't believe it all the way. What must it cost Dean, and what constitution of character must he have, to be able to take the house, the one he'd prepared to live in with the woman he'd dreamed of and waited for, and to turn it over to said woman and the other man she's going to marry instead? Dean does it so that the Disappointed House will "be disappointed no longer." Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I almost feel bad for having a bit more to say about Dean than Teddy, but Teddy, a handsome artist, is such a must, such a given. I would've liked at least a chapter more of Emily and Teddy together before the conclusion of the series, after so many years of scares, misunderstandings, and disappointments between the two of them. That pair is set in my mind long before Emily saves Teddy from going to his death on the Flavian in Womanhood, even way before the night she's aware of her falling in love with him back "In the Old John House." I would've liked more, but I reckon, all things considered, when Emily hears that last, momentous whistle signaling for her in Lofty John's bush, and Teddy lets her know, "I've been trying all my life to tell you I love you," it's enough, in its own way.

Of course, Montgomery's unfailingly splendid descriptions of places like Blair Water add to what is, as I said, some of the best reading of my life.

4.5 stars

My rating is a little lower than the first book in the trilogy but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this book. It was really neat seeing Perry, Teddy, Ilsa, and Emily in a bigger city on Prince Edward Island to attend high school. They’ve all grown and matured a lot. It’s impossible to doubt that they’ll all do great things in their lives. I do hope they don’t drift apart as most friends do when they leave high school do but to pursue their dreams it might have to happen... It’s a terrible reality that I can’t bear to think will happen to them all. One has to appreciate that Mrs. Montgomery brought and kept a certain realistic view in her books. Some authors tended to avoid such heavy topics in children’s and YA books back in the early 1900s.

There were two certain issues that affected my enjoyment of this story. The first issue is that I was expecting a little more romance in this book than what actually occurred. The boys barely appeared in this book! Majority of time it only seemed to happen every once in a while and always ended in a scandal. There were a few precious moments that were taken from these events that were beautiful. Just when I hoped something more would happen someone or some other event would spoil the moment.

​I read Emily of New Moon well over a year ago and adored it. Why I waited so long to read this, I don't know because I love it even more! (I might even dare to say I like it more than Anne of Green Gables???)

Emily Climbs is 5 stars for all the following wonderful reasons.

I don't think I've ever related to more or sympathized more with a character than with Emily. She's precious and beautiful and so much like me it's somewhat creepy. But beautiful at the same time. For instance: n  "Her characters lived and laughed and talked and did and enjoyed and suffered--she saw them on the background of the storm. Her cheeks burned, her heart beat, she tingled from head to foot with the keen rapture of creation...Ilse had got drunk on Malcolm Shaw's forgotten Scotch whiskey, but Emily was intoxicated with immortal wine."n Okay, 1) that is beautifully written and 2) I RELATE. ME ME. ME. ALL ME. Emily climbs to become the writer she wants to be despite everyone around her either hesitantly supporting her, not really supporting her, or flat out condemning her for her dream. Her love her writing is incessant and relatable to me and actually truly inspiring.

Also, all the characters are so so so interesting. Some in a way that has me flailing hopelessly in love with them and others because I enjoy hating them (like Dean, and Andrew, and nearly all of Emily's relatives.) There's Ilse, Emily's best female friend who is so different from Emily but is her other half so well. So much character development between the first book and this is evident and its beautiful. Development in the characters themselves and in the friendships. How Emily and Ilse love each other is beautiful. Ilse is fierce with her words in a vocal way while Emily is fierce with hers in a writing sort of way. How they grow to love each other more through their experiences and friendship is why Lucy Montgomery is the best at writing female friendships. (If you like Diana and Anne, you will love Emily and Ilse.)

And then there's Teddy, the best friend of Emily who is kind and sweet and the one Emily has fallen in love with. (He has to fall in love with her too because this is literally my favorite kind of falling-in-love story and I couldn't handle it if he doesn't happen.)

And the other favorite falling-in-love trope is the slow-burn hate to love ordeal that seems to be the case with Ilse and Perry. Two fiercely confident individuals with sharp, independent wills who rely on each other's companionship without admitting it. (They MUST fall in love HELP ME.)

As for Perry himself, I found him even more hilarious and scathingly confident in this installment than in the first. (I.e. the scene where he shows up at Emily's aunt's house, climbs through the window after telling Emily he'll kiss her. I don't ship him and Emily BUT YES.) I LOVE HIM. HE'S LIKE A LITTLE TEENAGE RHYS.

The friendships are golden.

There is also a sense of defending femininity and womanhood and being female in general from Emily herself in her encounters with supposed friends who at times minimize her for her gender or for being "pretty" as if that is all she is. And when a certain somebody asks her to marry him (well tells her too actually) and she says no because she doesn't want to is reason 24874209 why I love her.

Montgomery does an excellent job at setting up a plot that seems like real life, attaching you to the events and the characters, riling you up at unbearable characters, and making you feel for the main protagonist and all that she's going through. At least, this is the case in my experience any time I've read any of her books.

I adore, and have always adored, the scenery Montgomery casts in her books. Prince Edward Island is a home away from home for me even though I've never been there (but must someday) because of these books. Even though the Anne of Green Gables series tends to have more descriptions due to Anne's point of view, Emily's descriptions of the scenery make you feel the feeling of it rather than just see it and wish you were there.

The book ends on a sweet note but also has you hanging for the next book. (Which I'll read promptly thank you very much.)

Some great quotes are also in this book! I mean, the whole book is beautiful with so very many lines for highlighting, but these were some of my favorites:

"You can't eat doughnuts and remain dramatic. Try it."

"A woman who has a sense of humor possesses no refuge from the merciless truth about herself. She cannot think herself misunderstood. She cannot revel in self pity. She cannot comfortably dame anyone who differs from her." This was said by Dean, a character I rather despised, and the rest of the quote says "No, Emily, the woman with a sense of humor isn't to be envied," is something I disagree with BUT the first part is golden.

"Nobody is free, except for a few brief moments now and then, when the flash comes, or when, as on my haystack night, the soul slips over into eternity for a little space. All the rest of our years we are slaves to something--traditions--conventions--ambitions--relations. And sometimes, as tonight, I think the last is the hardest bondage of all." Again, another quote from Dean that I loved despite my high dislike for him.

So, YES I recommend this book to all people especially those who have read the first book in the trilogy and those who've read Anne of Green Gables. And to the people who've already read this book. Read it again. It'll be worth it.

I have always been of the camp that Dean's obsession with Emily is really icky.

I didn't enjoy this as a kid because the brief lights of sometimes doing well at school and having her writing occasionally recognised isn't enough to counter the darkness of Emily having to live with a controlling old harridan who constantly thinks the worst of her and of her spending so much time with a creepy old man who is grooming her. The Dean and Emily relationship is one of the grossest in literature.

This was a WONDERFUL sequel to the first Emily book. I honestly can't decide which book was better than the other.

Parts of the book are in diary form, while others are set in regular story form, so you get an all-around view of Emily's life. I like how the author weaved the two forms together.

I loved the storyline; it seems like very simple, little things that take place, but as you reflect on it, you realize the story is actually quite deep in thought, and well plotted. Emily is allowed to attend the Shrewbury school where her friends are going. However, the rule is that she must live with grumpy, old Aunt Ruth, who seemingly has stricter rules than Aunt Elizabeth did when Emily lived with her. And Aunt Ruth is always accusing Emily of being sly, which runs down Emily's patience.

During the time that Emily lives with her Aunt Ruth, she is not allowed to write fiction, which seems to put a damper on Emily's future career of writing. Her old teacher, who has helped guide her [Mr. Carpenter] says the time away from fiction will improve Emily's writing ability. Yet still, her wild, imaginative mind can hardly fathom being separated from her beloved hobby.

I am really anticipating the third and final Emily book now, to see how her story ends!

امیلی عزیزم؛ چقدر در جلد دوم دوست‌داشتنی تر و شیرین بودی! خوندن این جلد خیلی بهم چسبید و واقعا دوستش داشتم.
امیلی که حالا نوجوون شده، به دنبال پیشرفت و به قولی «فتح قله های آلپ» عه. ماجراها و فراز و نشیب های که پشت سر گذاشت و تجربه‌هایی که بدست آورد بسیار ارزشمند و خواندنی بودن.
وقار و هوش و ذکاوت امیلی، و همچنین استعداد خارق العاده‌اش در نوشتن خیلی برام جذابه. امیلی در مقابل شکست ها سر خم نمیکنه و تسلیم نمیشه. بیشتر از قبل به دنبال شکوفایی و کشف ناشناخته هاست.
ادامه بده امیلی عزیزم، مشتاقانه همراهیت می‌کنم.

Much to my delight, Emily Climbs was every bit as good as Emily of New Moon! L.M. Montgomery’s ability to write characters that I actually feel genuinely concerned for cannot be matched. Halfway through I realized that I was reacting emotionally to their experiences on nearly the same level as if they were real people that I knew in real life! I couldn’t be more invested, and it’s all due to the way she writes. Just like Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs is a flawless 5 star all time favorite! Can’t wait to find out how the trilogy ends in the third book.

I did some reflecting in my (review? Essay? Piece?) thing on Emily of New Moon about why I don't love Emily as much as Anne, why I haven't read the trilogy in many years when I won't let a year go by Anne-less. Emily Climbs clarifies the matter a bit more.

There is a great deal more cynicism in Emily's world than in Anne's. I was astonished reading the first chapters at Emily's perceptiveness – and, like any perceptive person moving among the unimaginative and less incisive, she has, very young, developed an almost inevitable shell of jaded sarcasm. Mr. Carpenter doesn't call her "Jade" for nothing. I don't class myself with Emily (or Anne) in terms of intelligence or sensitivity, but still, I am of their ilk. Emily weeps over David Copperfield - oh, how I understand that. Aunt Ruth (not of the race that knows Joseph) upbraids her for the tears – crying over people who don't exist! And, with Emily, I protest that of course they exist. In a meta moment, Emily tells her they are as real as Aunt Ruth is – and so they are, of course. But Ruth is part of the force that demonstrates daily for Emily how flat most people's lives are – none of the terrible deep dark moments for them, but also none of the marvellous highs – nor even the small secret pleasures a combination of being able to see and being able to appreciate can bring. Aunt Elizabeth is Marilla without the sense of humor, and with a solid layer of scarring – from the accident with Jimmy to, probably, the fact that she is single in a time and place where spinsterhood is a wretched condition – to prevent most softer emotions … Aunt Laura has her moments, is loving and more willing and able to share it, but is prim and easily shocked. Uncle Jimmy is wonderful – but not comfortable, always; there is the occasional glimpse of what he might have been, of what was all but killed in him by the fall into the well, and you never quite know when it will make an appearance. Dr. Burnley has gone from bitter and cynical to … rather less bitter and cynical, and somewhat excessive. Aunt Ruth … Were I Emily, I think of the two conditions going to school in Shrewsbury, that I would lodge with Aunt Ruth and that I could not write any fiction for three years, the Aunt Ruth half would be worse. Fiction will still be there when it's over; the scars Aunt Ruth might leave will linger forever. Writing fiction is a passion which would not die in three years; living with Aunt Ruth would be torment. And so it was.

The idea of the wild, dark vein that exists here, but not in most of the rest of L.M.M.'s work as I know it, intensified as it went on. Emily has a mean streak – not very big, and not well-developed, but expressed now and then in sarcasm and cutting remarks which send people off bleeding and vowing never to mess with her again. And she has an understanding for darkness; she hears goblins as well as wind spirits, and the thought is inescapable that she could have easily gone either way. Had she been raised by Uncle Wallace … I can see her at the age she is ending the trilogy, with a career as a viciously funny writer, slashing more tender folk to shreds and making millions doing it, but treasuring more the string of scalps at her belt than all the money.

I think I was too young to get hold of all of this the last time I read Emily, and so these three books were not as enjoyable as the sweet and lovely place that is Anne's Avonlea. Anne has her moments – but compare her handling of Josie Pye to Emily's dealings with the evil Evelyn Blake. Anne wins by taking the high road, and Josie Pye, Pye-like, would never recognize her victory; Emily routs Evelyn foot and horse and leaves her bleeding in the dust.

I loved this tale of the teenaged girl beginning to make a mark for herself. The tangled webs, to reference another LMM work, are beginning to tighten, but they aren't too heavy yet; the future is still completely unwritten, or seemingly so, and hope is high. There is a savor of the time and place, not so very long ago or very far away except in everything that matters; good companionship; wonderful writing; pathos in its best sense and moments that made me laugh aloud. Middle books are often maligned and disregarded things, but this is by far my favorite of the three. I'll never again be able to leave Emily out my list of the Montgomery girls I love.
ETA: I found the pictures in Emily's room at Aunt Ruth's! http://agoldoffish.wordpress.com/2011...