An interesting variety of tales, from comedic to unexpectedly dark. Most are easily a cut above the usual formulaic stories that Lucy Maud sold to magazines. Still, not all are winners. "The Cheated Child" is perhaps the most predictable, and "Here Comes the Bride" is needlessly long and anticlimactic. But enough about those; it's time for my list of favorites!

-An Afternoon with Mr. Jenkins
-Retribution
-The Twins Pretend
-Fancy's Fool
-A Dream Come True
-Penelope Struts Her Theories
-Fool's Errand
-A Commonplace Woman

3.5 stars

I liked most of the stories but some were rather weak and sometimes the connection to the Blythes felt forced.

I will have to purchase The Blythes Are Quoted and I hope I will like that unedited and unabridged version better.


An Afternoon with Mr. Jenkins
5 stars
An unselfish father. Very sweet

Retribution
2 stars
A bitter old woman calling a man names on his deathbed. Really creepy...

The Twins Pretend
4 stars
Sweet but it really is a repetitive and kind of odd theme of misunderstandings between lovers and years and years of separation.

Fancy's Fool
3.5 stars
A garden of shadows and ghosts. Interesting but kind of odd and a tad creepy.

A Dream Come True
2.5
As a nightmare. An old love turns out to be a lunatic and the desired adventurous life not so desirable.

Penelope Struts Her Theories
2.5
The concept is nice but somehow I didn't like the story itself.

Reconciliation
2
Ooookeeeey. A slap to be remembered?

The Cheated Child
4
A sweet happy ending.

Fool's Errand
3.5
Someone finally kept his promise. Sweet.

The Pot and the Kettle
4
Nice and cute and predictable except for that last sentence.

Here comes the Bride
4
The many perspectives of a wedding

Brother Beware
3.5
An interesting kidnapping.

The Road to Yesterday
4
You are not Dick! Identical looking cousins seem to be common.

A Commonplace Woman
4
An old maid who is on her deathbed recollects her life.

Historias de Avonlea es una colección de relatos, inspirados en los mismos lugares y algunas personas que están presentes en los libros de Ana de las tejas verdes, y aunque se menciona una que otra vez a este personaje, no es protagonista de ninguna de las historias.

Aunque no tiene el mismo nivel que logran los libros de Anne, si puedo recomendarlo porque lleva el sello de la escritora, pasajes hermosos, historias sencillas, personajes entrañable.

Disfrute mucho leyéndole, no le doy mas calificación porque sentí que faltaron mas historias y mas diversidad de temas, pero quede muy satisfecha.

Historias de avonlea

Este libro podría considerarse un spin-off de 'Ana de las Tejas Verdes', o más específicamente, de 'Ana la de Avonlea'. Es una lectura ligera y encantadora, compuesta por 12 historias individuales, la mayoría de ellas divertidas y con alguna que otra mención a personajes ya conocidos de Avonlea. Lo interesante es que no es necesario ser un fanático acérrimo de la saga para disfrutarlo, dado que muchos de los personajes son nuevos, lo que lo hace igualmente disfrutable tanto para seguidores de la saga como para aquellos que no están muy familiarizados con ella.

Read in 2008

I like Montgomary and I can't rate 4 or 3 stars!

At 4.5/5 stars, this is a solid volume in the L.M. Montgomery collection of short stories. There are quite a few funny tales in here that will make you smile, and Anne and Gilbert Blythe are mentioned in here, since this happens in the same world. Ms. Montgomery had a deft hand for short stories, and it shows here.

I had never read this particular Montgomery work, and reading it right after Rilla of Ingleside was perfect since the Blythes are side characters in many of these short stories. We get glimpses further along in their lives, with a few mentions of Anne and Gilbert's grandchildren. This collection is a little unusual in that these fourteen stories were all included in Montgomery's final manuscript, The Blythes Are Quoted, which wasn't published in its entirety until 2009. For some reason, some of the stories from The Blythes Are Quoted were pulled out from the rest of the manuscript and published in this separate collection in 1974. The title is forgettable and doesn't make a whole lot of sense; seems like they should have just published the original manuscript with its more sensical title from the get-go. Some of these stories have a grimmer or more caustic feel to them than Montgomery's usual style (which some--although not I--might be tempted to call saccharine), but that's understandable given that it was written during World War II while Montgomery was suffering from depression. Apparently the darkest content wasn't used from The Blythes Are Quoted, however, and this collection is still overwhelmingly positive in outlook.

The Road to Yesterday did not disappoint - a series of short stories, each centered around a family known to the Blythes but never quite measuring up to them, this is a quick read. For the most part it is all sweetness and light, at least in as much as stories so densely populated with old maids and orphans can be considered as such. (It is also not entirely surprising that Wikipedia notes, "For a woman who had given the world so much joy [life] was mostly an unhappy one." I suppose Montgomery knew of what she wrote.) Even so, there is no shortage of happy endings for characters she takes such pains to create.

By and large, there's not much substance to The Road to Yesterday, but I mean that in the best possible way. This is escapism reading. Montgomery has a gift for transporting her reader where she wants and with whom she wants and I felt myself fully drawn into the homes and lives of these lovely characters. Anne, her husband Gilbert, and their children are so artfully woven in that the reader doesn't realize that Road is, in many ways, simply a continuation of the Anne series, told from different viewpoints, but mining much of the same ground. This is a delightful little read for anyone who has ever thrilled at Anne's adventures or been entranced by her world.

Dosyć typowo dla zbiorów część opowiadań była świetna, a część średnia. Jednak rozwlekałam czytanie tego tomu i nie chciałam się z nim rozstawać, ponieważ był to już ostatni z serii o mojej ukochanej Anne. Posłowie poruszyło mnie niemal równie mocno, co sama książka. Już na zawsze pozyskałaś fragment mej duszy, moja Aniu❤️

This was very different from the other books in the Anne of Green Gables series. The themes were much darker and there was something unscrupulous or wicked in many of the characters. It was interesting. I enjoyed most of the short stories but not all of them. The poems were okay. I just tend not to enjoy poetry that much. Glad I read this, though.

Fourteen interesting tales, or vignettes, that occurred to the Bythe’s friends and neighbors during while they were living in Glen St. Mary. The stories toward the end are obviously after WW1. Some of them seem to leave more questions than answers but are still interesting.

1)t‘An Afternoon with Mr. Jenkins’. (5) Timothy has an adventure with a stranger who shows up and asks some odd personal questions.

2)t‘Retribution’. (1) A vindictive old woman visits the sickbed of a paralyzed dying man to confide some terrible facts. Didn’t like this one for several reasons, but mainly because it’s too mean and I would never want to be in the man’s situation.

3)t‘The Twins Pretend’. (3) The twins Jill & P.J. run into Antony Lennox on the beach and form a plan to help him renovate the old Lennox place. In the process he fixes a romantic mistake he made years ago.

4)t‘Fancy’s Fool’. (5) A romantic ’ghost’ story. While staying with her great aunt, Esme Barry finds herself in an enchanted garden where she meets the man of her dreams. Only to find that he is a dream. Or is he?

5)t‘A Dream Comes True’. (5) Anthony Fingold daydreams about more excitement in his life. He sounds like a man going through a mid-life crisis. Be careful what you wish for.

6)t‘Penelope Struts her Theories’. (5) Penelope Craig, a recognized authority on child training, decides to adopt an 8 year old boy of a deceased friend much to the amusement of her neighbors.

7)t‘The Reconciliation’. (3) A very, very short story. After the minister preaching on forgiveness, Myrtle Shelley goes to forgive a friends from her younger days. Odd twist.

8)t‘The Cheated Child’. (5) 8 year old Patrick Brewster’s uncle and guardian has just died leaving him everything. But now he has to decide who of all his greedy relatives he wants to live with and be his new guardian. But his dreams do come true.

9)t‘Fool’s Errand’. (5) Lincoln Burns never got married but spent his life caring for him mother. Now she’s gone and he remembers a lovely little girl he met on the beach as a young boy. Very mysterious and I’m surprised she waited.

10)t‘The Pot and the Kettle’. (4) The story of Chrissie, another girl who went to the same Barn Dance as Rilla. She’s being pressured by her mom to marry a man she’s never seen for financial reasons. When she refuses, she’s sent to stay with her old nanny for a while. Slow and wordy but the end is sweet.

11)t‘Here Comes the Bride’. (1) A boring, long-winded series of internal conversations of gossip by the attendees during and after a wedding about the circumstances behind the hurried wedding and the looks and history of everyone there. The best was the end conversation between Susan and Mollie Hamilton.

12)t‘Brother Beware’. (5) Two bachelor brothers. One decides to stop the other from getting engaged and in the process finds out his thinking is reversed. Hilarious example of how women play men.

13)t‘The Road to Yesterday’. (3) Susette King is visiting with Harvey Brooks’s family at Glenellyn where she expects they’ll get engaged. Then she makes a sentimental visit to her nearby childhood home and during a thunderstorm things change. Oddly uncomfortable ending.

14)t‘A Commonplace Woman’. (3) Very similar story as the above ‘Here Comes the Bride’ only it’s the thoughts and reminiscences of relatives waiting for an ailing old woman who’s dying. Again: borring. Until we get the old woman’s memories of a beautiful time in her childhood that led to a fiercely devoted relationship.

Footnote: 1) I wonder what was going on in the single page scene at the very beginning of the book called ‘Uncle Stephan’s Will’?

2) Seemed to be a lot of 8 year old boys becoming orphans. And throughout the whole series a lot of girls are marrying the guys who picked on them as a child.