LMM Challenge - Anne of the Island, Pat of Silver Bush & Mistress Pat

I was able to fit in three L.M. Montgomery reads in January, which was a wonderful way to start the year. I always reread one Anne book for this challenge, and this year, it was Anne of the Island. I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite Anne book, but this one may just be the winner. She goes away to college and makes new friends. Who wouldn’t want to live in Patty’s Place?? And there’s finally a happy ending (beginning, really) for Anne and Gilbert. Took them long enough!

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I also read Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat for the first time. I haven’t ventured too far out of Montgomery’s Anne and Emily, so I was looking forward to meeting Pat. As a child, Pat was absolutely delightful. She left out a dish of milk for the fairies each night, she believed that new babies came from the parsley bed, and she loved her home of Silver Bush passionately. She also hated change, which was bound to cause some trouble for her in life. The fairies and the parsley obviously faded as she grew older, but the love of Silver Bush and the hatred of change remained her dominant characteristics throughout the two books. As much as I hate to criticize one of my all-time favorite authors, I’m not sure that was enough to build a character on. Pat didn’t feel as alive to me as Anne or Emily, especially in the second book of the series. What can you do with a character whose favorite thing to do is clean the house?

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I loved Montgomery’s descriptions of nature as always. There’s a lot of that in these two books because Pat is one of those people who notices the world around her. I love the way that I’m more observant of nature after reading a Montgomery book.

I guess not everyone can be Anne Shirley, and that’s okay. I still enjoyed getting to know Pat and her family (and the indomitable Judy Plum). And I’m looking forward to discovering some of L.M. Montgomery’s other heroines.

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