Why we love Ilse

Imagine Diana Barry saying this:

"If I hear of any more meddling and sneaking I'll slit your throats, and rip out your hearts, and tear your eyes out. Yes, and I'll cut off your ears and wear them pinned on my dress."

Confronting the uncanny

[This is my second post in the Emily of New Moon discussion over at Blogging Anne of Green Gables.]

I'm up to Chapter 14 ("Fancy Fed") and have so many notes I'm going to try to group them by theme. I think this is also pretty telling of my sense of the differences between Anne and Emily. The former had me merely keeping track of her literary allusions, the latter is leading me into slightly darker territory and urging me to do a little more than simply copy quotations. All is not "sweetness and light" here. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Anne has so many more readers?

In reading about "the flash" I'm reminded of the sudden stabs of "joy" that C.S. Lewis described as beginning in his early childhood. Without going too deeply into it, he later linked it to the German idea of Sehnsucht (or "longing") that was an aspect of German Romanticism and a key part of the work of Novalis (particularly, the "blue flower"), who (incidently) hugely influenced George MacDonald (the Scottish author of At the Back of the North Wind and many many other things (Tori Amos is said to be currently working on the music to a stage adaptation of The Light Princess)--Lewis Carroll credits him with giving him the courage to have Alice's Adventures in Wonderland published). Of course, Lewis was heavily influenced by MacDonald as well.

Anyway, what's important for now is just to keep in mind this sense of something "other" that illuminates and inspires Emily at unexpected times.

Now. Aside from the trauma of the death of her father and sudden changes in her life, the first glimpse Emily gets of something truly strange is when Cousin Jimmy is showing her around his garden (in Chapter 7, "The Book of Yesterday"):

Emily's heart swelled with pride.

"It's a noble house," she said.

"And what about my garden?" demanded Cousin Jimmy jealousy [sic].

"It's fit for a queen," said Emily, gravely and sincerely.

Cousin Jimmy nodded, well pleased, and then a strange sound crept into his voice and an odd look into his eyes.

"There is a spell woven round this garden. The blight shall spare it and the green worm pass it by. Drought dares not invade it and the rain comes here most gently."

Emily took an involuntary step backward--she almost felt like running away. But now Cousin Jimmy was himself again.

This happens throughout the books--Cousin Jimmy's "spells" are attributed to the fact that he nearly died after being accidentally knocked into a well as a child (by Aunt Elizabeth). He's never been the same since...and also composes poetry, which he keeps "in his head" and will recite only "when the spirit moves him."

And then we come to Chapter 10 ("Growing Pains"). I don't want to describe too much of the story for those who have not yet read it, but Emily is about to have her hair cut off against her will:

Aunt Elizabeth returned with the scissors; they clicked suggestively as she opened them; that click, as if by magic, seemed to loosen something--some strange formidable power in Emily's soul. She turned deliberately around and faced her aunt. She felt her brows drawing together in an unaccustomed way--she felt an uprush as from unknown depths of some irresistible surge of energy.

"Aunt Elizabeth," she said, looking straight at the lady with the scissors, "my hair is not going to be cut off. Let me hear no more of this."

An amazing thing happened to Aunt Elizabeth. She turned pale--she laid the scissors down--she looked aghast for one moment at the transformed or possessed child before her--and then for the first time in her life Elizabeth Murray turned tail and fled--literally fled--to the kitchen.

"What is the matter, Elizabeth?" cried Laura, coming in from the cook-house.

"I saw--father--looking from her face," gasped Elizabeth, trembling. "And she said, 'Let me hear no more of this'--just as he always said it--his very words."

Emily overheard her and ran to the sideboard mirror. She had had, while she was speaking, an uncanny feeling of wearing somebody else's face instead of her own.

She is also frightened of what has happened, especially since it's completely involuntary. She can't assume "the Murray look" when she wants to.

Of course, something else happens that enables Aunt Elizabeth to get back at Emily, and she is "locked in the spare room and told that she must stay there till bedtime."

It's really interesting to do a parallel reading of this scene with the famous one in Jane Eyre. There are a lot of similarities: the dark room, the large bed, the fact that people have died there, the type of fear that invades the souls of these two young girls, etc. But where Jane passes out, Emily climbs out the window.

What I want to point out is that in describing the room, Montgomery adds something else:

Worst of all, right across the room from her, high up on top of the black wardrobe, was a huge, stuffed, white Arctic owl, staring at her with uncanny eyes.

There's that word again. I've checked with this handy "search" feature and Montgomery uses the word "uncanny" at least eight times--the first two within three or four pages of each other. (Also, you can find "possessed" at least five times and "possess" three. But this search tool is not perfect because it misses all of the uses of these words. For example, it says that there are no instances of "possession," although it's right there in Chapter 13.)

This part of Emily's story strongly reminds me of one of the better digressions in Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves (or at least, one of the few I still remember, having read the book about seven years ago). It begins with the contemplation of the word "uncanny" and extends into a long quotation from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time:

In anxiety one feels uncanny. Here the peculiar indefiniteness of that which Dasein finds itself alongside in anxiety, comes proximally to expression: "the nothing and nowhere". But here "uncanniness" also means "not-being-at home."

The narrator quoting Heidegger then picks up the thread and says,

Nevertheless regardless of how extensive his analysis is here, Heidegger still fails to point out that unheimlich when used as an adverb means "dreadfully," "awfully," "heaps of," and "an awful lot of." Largeness has always been a condition of the weird and unsafe; it is overwhelming, too much or too big. Thus that which is uncanny or unheimlich is neither homey nor protective, nor comforting nor familiar. It is alien, exposed, and unsettling [...].

I also came across another exploration of this word in my academic reading. This is from J. Hillis Miller's essay, "The Critic as Host" (in specifically referring to work by Thackeray and Hardy):

These sad love stories of a domestic affection which nevertheless introduces the uncanny, the alien, the parasitical into the closed economy of the home, the Unheimlich into the Heimlich, no doubt describe well enough the way some people may feel about the relation of a 'deconstructive' interpretation to 'the obvious or univocal meaning'. The parasite is destroying the host. The alien has invaded the house [...].

The editors added a footnote to "Unheimlich" and explain that it's "the German word for 'uncanny'. Miller implies that Heimlich means 'homely'. Heim is indeed the German word for 'home', but heimlich means 'secret'. For once Miller seems to have underestimated the duplicity of language."

Wheels within wheels...

And I suddenly remember that both the Emily books and Jane Eyre each contain decidedly uncanny events that help resolve their respective plots.

It may seem that I'm exaggerating these darker themes and a "normal" reader wouldn't really notice them so much. But as a girl reading these books, I remember being creeped out a lot...especially as the series progressed. I can't separate this current reading of the first Emily book from my knowledge of the last two, and I particularly notice how skilfully Montgomery has set the stage for what comes later. Forgive the comparison, but an example is what Rowling has done with the world of Harry Potter. People, places, and objects are present in the first book that take on greater (and darker) significance as the books progress, but because of the protagonists' age and the newness of everything, the unsuspecting reader takes it all as a matter of course. All the more reason why the subsequent unfolding of events seems so revelatory.

Call her "Em'ly" at your own risk

[This is my first contribution to the Emily of New Moon discussion over at Blogging Anne of Green Gables]

I first read the Emily books as a teenager living in Colombia and was struck by the subtle sense of danger that's threaded through them. I've mentioned that although I've always considered Anne a friend, I personally identify more with Emily--not because she seems more "human" or has more faults (which certainly is an argument that could be made), but because the world in which she lives is more hazardous; hence, real. We never really fear for Anne in the various environments and "scrapes" in which she finds herself, but Emily's situation is much more precarious. The physical setting of New Moon and the fragile condition of her internal state deepen the reader's concern. Plus, Emily's world is simply darker... By the time you hit Emily's Quest, you wonder whether Montgomery was influenced by Villette in evoking the novel's tone. (In her journals, she mentions not being able to forgive Charlotte for the ending--but it would be interesting to compare the dates to see if this was before or after the last Emily book was published.)

I'm reading this one more slowly and am only at Chapter 7 (it's hard for me to slow down once I start rereading these books!). I don't think I'll list the literary allusions in the same way I did with Anne, but I do plan on mentioning them. Aside from the clear references to The Pilgrim's Progress and the Song of Solomon (her comments about the former always make me smile because they're so true!), I also suspect that George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind may have inspired the "Wind Woman." (I easily imagine Emily flying away with her like Diamond did.)

I was also reminded of Jane Eyre (which I am almost positive influenced these novels). It begins with this exchange with Ellen Greene:

"I don't think I want Aunt Ruth to take me," said Emily deliberately, after a moment's reflection.

"Well, you won't have the choosing likely. You ought to be thankful to get a home anywhere. Remember you're not of much importance."

"I am important to myself," cried Emily proudly.

I was immediately reminded of one of Jane's famous lines to Rochester:

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

I have some thoughts about "the flash" as well, but I'll save them for another post. I look forward to reading other thoughts on this brilliant little book.

The Anne-girl arrives

one hundred years ago today.

More of Montgomery's literary allusions

This went up yesterday at Blogging Anne of Green Gables.

Here are the wealth of references found between Chapters 7 and 19 (from Anne's prayers to the Debating Club concert):

~ Marilla determines to "send to the manse tomorrow and borrow the Peep of Day series". (The copyright of the edition linked to here says 1925, but I imagine it was around in other forms years before that.)

~ Anne learns the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4).

~ Enough to make Lewis Carroll smile:

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.

~ Anne on Sunday school:

"Then all the other little girls recited a paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn't, but I could recite, 'The Dog at His Master's Grave' if she liked. [This is the best I could do.] That's in the Third Royal Reader. It isn't a really truly religious piece of poetry, but it's so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it wouldn't do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it's splendid. There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.

Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian's evil day.

I don't know what 'squadrons' means nor 'Midian,' either, but it sounds so tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it."

These lines seem to be from an old Christmas carol, "The Race that Long in Darkness Pined." (I can just hear her.)

~ "I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister I'd pick the short, snappy ones."

~ After meeting Diana for the first time:

"Don't you think Diana has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to sing a song called 'Nelly in the Hazel Dell.'"

Later, when Marilla goes to ask her about the infamous amethyst brooch, Anne is

shelling peas by the spotless table and singing "Nelly of the Hazel Dell" with a vigour and expression that did credit to Diana's teaching [...].

And here it is (as well as some additional background history):

In the Hazel Dell my Nelly's sleeping,
Nelly lov'd so long!
And my lonely watch I'm nightly keeping,
Nelly, lost and gone.
Here in moonlight often we have wander'd
Thro' the silent glade;
Now where leafy branches all point downward;
Little Nelly's laid.
All alone my watch I'm keeping
In the Hazel Dell,
For my darling Nelly's near me sleeping.
Nelly, dear, farewell.

~ Anne quotes Rachel Lynde quoting...Benjamin Franklin?:

"Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.' But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."

I first encountered this line in Poor Richard's Almanack, but I've also seen it attributed to Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. Many (most?) of Franklin's quotations were lifted from other sources, so Mrs. Lynde would be relieved to know that she isn't actually quoting a "Yank."

~ Amid the amethyst brooch tragedy, Marilla remembers Luke 9:62:

"Oh dear, I'm afraid Rachel was right from the first. But I've put my hand to the plough and I won't look back."

~ In Diana's list of reasons why Anne shouldn't leave school:

"and Alice Andrews is going to bring a new Pansy book next week and we're all going to read it out loud, chapter about, down by the brook. And you know how you are so fond of reading out loud, Anne."

~ I think Proverbs 25:21-22 was a favorite passage of Montgomery's--it's mentioned many times in her work (and probably comforted her amid the trials of her living situation). It's certainly a favorite of Anne's. After confessing the truth of the mouse-drowned pudding sauce, Anne tells how Marilla

"just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn't swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on my head."

And when Anne accepts Mrs. Barry's apology,

"I felt fearfully embarrassed, Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, 'I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.' That was a pretty dignified way of speaking, wasn't it, Marilla? I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry's head."

~ When Mrs. Barry first separates them, Anne states,

"My heart is broken. The stars in their courses fight against me, Marilla."

This is from the story of Deborah in Judges 5:20.

~ Anne misses Diana's welcome when she goes back to school, inspiring Montgomery to quote from the fourth canto of Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage":

The Caesar's pageant shorn of Brutus' bust
Did but of Rome's best son remind her more

Then Psalm 139:14 is invoked as

"the next morning a note, most fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel, were passed across to Anne."

~ Anne's pronouncement,

"But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?"

foretells the penchant of Montgomery's 1929 titular heroine in Magic for Marigold:

She had picked it up from Aunt Marigold and from then to the end of life things would be for Marigold interesting or uninteresting. Some people might demand of life that it be happy or untroubled or successful. Marigold Lesley would only ask that it be interesting.

~ Numbers in the Avonlea Debating Club Concert: Prissy Andrews "climbed the slimy ladder, dark without one ray of light" in "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" by Rose Hartwick Thorpe.

~ Sam Sloane recites "How Sockery Set a Hen" [scroll down for passage].

~ Mr. Phillips "gave Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar".

~ And the aforementioned moment when Gilbert recites "Bingen on the Rhine" (while Anne stonily ignores him by reading "Rhoda Murray's library book"). Diana says,

"Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line,

There's another, not a sister

he looked right down at you."

It probably rankled all the more since it had been a favorite of hers.

~ This Japanese site has a good collection of the primary sources listed in the novel.

Lines from Anne's history

I had such fun writing about L.M. Montgomery's allusions to Browning and Lowell, I've decided to cross-post my most recent contribution to Blogging Anne of Green Gables here.

There are a wealth of literary references in Chapter 5, and it's interesting that they're concentrated in the chapter devoted to Anne's past.

"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

I wasn't able to find the source for this one. All searches lead back to Anne herself. Even The Annotated Anne of Green Gables says, "The source of Anne's allusion is unknown." I wonder if Irene Gammel found it?

Random aside: Do you have any lines that you say to comfort yourself in trying times? I sometimes murmur (or at least think to myself), "The only way out is through"--a version of Frost's line. My fiancé is prone to say, "¿Qué hacemos con este cementerio de sueños?"--which is basically Anne's line! Turns out he got it from a Ricardo Arjona song, "Me dejaste." (Which reminds me that I need to find a copy of Anne, la de tejados verdes soon--both he and his sister would enjoy reading it... Which leads me to another random question: Why oh why is the film not subtitled in Spanish? Back in '93 or so, my sisters and I watched it on tv while living in Medellín and it was called La infancia de Ana. Perhaps I should begin looking for it under that title?)

Now to rein in the rambling...

"I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage."

I'm sure everyone recognized Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. What's funny is that even though the story is of the tragic and romantic kind that Anne loves, she isn't completely swept away by it. There is still a practical side to her that takes issue with Juliet's words.

"I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart--'The Battle of Hohenlinden' and 'Edinburgh after Flodden,' and 'Bingen on the Rhine,' and most of the 'Lady of the Lake' and most of 'The Seasons' by James Thompson [sic]. Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader--'The Downfall of Poland'--that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn't in the Fifth Reader--I was only in the Fourth--but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read."

I couldn't find "The Downfall of Poland" online, but it was written by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (also the author of "The Battle of Hohenlinden"). I was very happy to find the complete text of Sir Walter Scott's "The Lady of the Lake"--but it's a PDF file, so it will take a bit to load. Anne has a deep affinity for Scotland, it seems (which only makes sense, given the history of that part of Canada).

In collecting these links, I found a site called Anne's Poetry Place, which points out that

Gilbert recites ["Bingen on the Rhine"] in the first concent [sic] that Anne attends. When he comes to the line "There's another, not a sister," he looks down upon Anne, as Diana later accounts. However, after teasing Anne about her red hair, Gilbert is unable to win her affection through even this most romantic gesture.

So a poem that was an old favorite of hers was later used against her! I wonder if Gilbert knew how she loved it?

The shore road was "woodsy and wild and lonesome."

Montgomery herself is quoting John Greenleaf Whittier's "Cobbler Keezar's Vision." I think I'll finish this post off with its last two stanzas:

The weary mill-girl lingers
Beside the charmed stream,
And the sky and the golden water
Shape and color her dream.

Air wave the sunset gardens,
The rosy signals fly;
Her homestead beckons from the cloud,
And love goes sailing by.

Beginning with Anne

My first post to Kate's Blogging Anne of Green Gables project went up this morning. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Anne's publication, I look forward to revisiting this old favorite and exploring the reasons why it has meant so much to me as a reader. Montgomery's countless literary allusions influenced my imagination when I was a child, introducing me to the Greats. She understood what it meant to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and I think she would be gratified to know of the literary worlds she has opened up to others as well.

Playing catch-up

• Francisco Goldman has won the Index on Censorship TR Fyvel Book Award for The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? Watch his heartfelt acceptance speech. (via Logophilia)
• The Bookstrust Translated Fiction site gets added to my sidebar, thanks to The Literary Saloon.
• Chad Post's account of his recent publisher conference in Argentina gives much-needed insight into how publishers get connected to unstranslated authors.
  
• Nigel Beale posted his fascinating interview with Irene Gammel last week. She addresses many thoughts I've always had about L.M. Montgomery and Anne, but have never found expressed. Her Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up A Literary Classic has gone straight to my TBR list. Her website is pretty impressive as well.
• Also, Kate plans to discuss Gammel's book in the future and has created a group blog for Anne of Green Gables--the discussion is set to begin on 1 June.

Anne turns 100

Margaret Atwood has penned a lovely, forthright essay on Anne Shirley's 100th year:

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world," Anne whispers in the very last lines of Anne of Green Gables. She's fond of Victorian poetry, so it's appropriate that she ends her story by quoting from a song sung by the optimistic heroine of Robert Browning's dramatic poem "Pippa Passes"; doubly appropriate because Anne Shirley herself acts a kind of Pippa throughout the book. Pippa is a poor Italian orphan girl who slaves away in a silk-spinning mill, yet manages to preserve a pure imagination and a love of nature despite her lowly status. Like Pippa, Anne is an unselfconscious innocent who, unbeknownst to herself, brings joy, imagination and the occasional epiphany to the citizenry of Avonlea, who are inclined to be practical but drear.

It would be interesting to read more on the literary references in Montgomery's books. Aside from Browning, she also cites Dickens, Thackeray, Shakespeare, Pope, the Bible, Tennyson, the Greeks, and many others. Since I read these books as a child, I often learned the references before the source material. It was funny studying literature in college and finally coming across many of these quotations in the originals. The discovery of this familiarity made the classics seem like old friends (as Anne herself would say).

(via Sarah Weinman)

Shadows of the plain truth

Having finished reading and jotting down my notes on Kirstin Allio's Garner yesterday, I've begun reading the relevant thread at The Litblog Co-op. (Litblog archives in general are so much buried treasure. I always have to remind myself to not let the immediacy of the Internet get in the way of all the wonderful stuff that's already been written.) Although I have a clear idea of the ending (after reading it twice), others didn't, which made me reexamine my own conclusions. (I'm tempted to specifically discuss it here, but refuse to spoil anything for those who haven't read it.) Yet I would agree with the general consensus that it's the beauty of the language that makes this such a memorable novel.

The electricity went out yesterday at school, so in between classes, I sat in the heat (windows wide open for the occasional breeze), and lost myself in its pages--a vague drowsiness blurring the boundaries of the outside world while I read, as if in a dream. Kassia Krozser describes this very well,

Quiet voices demand your full attention. You turn off the stereo, maybe head to a corner of a your backyard, away from the everyday life sounds. You don't want to miss a moment of the voice. This is reading at its best. You become one with the book.

I found the feeling the novel gave me evoked in Ed's use of "mesmerized" (and even "warm bath"!), as well as Heather Birrell's sense of being "enthralled in a near-hallucinogenic manner by Allio’s prose."

Dan Wickett does a good job of reviewing it. I just wanted to add some observations that I haven't already seen discussed elsewhere.

Much is obvious about the stoicism and repression in the lives of Garner's citizens. What isn't so apparent is the understated way in which Allio reveals their darker aspects. For example, I was well into the novel before I realized (with a slow shock) that Willard Heald reads much of the mail he delivers (when he decides it worthy of being delivered at all). I supposed that since he's the town's self-appointed historian, he believes his activities justified and has no qualms.

The other surprise was the revelation of who it was who actually burnt down Franklin Abbott's home--and the subsequent realization of the motive (p. 181). It's a passing mention that Willard writes to himself in tiny, offset, parenthetical prose--but what is equally shocking is the townspeople's (seemingly) calm acceptance of the fact. Is the event perceived as "normal"? Or is it more a matter of everyone's unwillingness to admit to the insanity of the act? (I tend to think the latter because it harmonizes with the horribly casual conversation that ensues at the end as Buck Herman "shoulders the weight of the girl"--just as he would a sack of the potatoes he's so nonchalantly discussing.)

Heald's participation (or should I say intentional non-participation?) in the various questionable circumstances of Frances, Abbott, Bickley, and even Asa Robinson amount to a chilling complicity with outright evil.

But as Kirstin Allio points out,

Ambiguity provokes tension. Ultimately, I think the story is more powerful if it remains less delineated. I hope the tension in Garner is compounded by Willard Heald’s voice bleeding into the text – he is that dangerous person who tries to speak for all. Where does Heald stop and Garner begin? Where does he read the town, read the mail, write the town, love the girl?

That being said, there are clues everywhere [...], and I hoped very much to elicit close readings. Words are shifty characters.

The text on the book's cover is about Heald, for starters. But as much as he writes and admits to himself, there are also things to which he is blind. At first I didn't believe that he knows what actually happened to Frances because his ability to consider another's perspective is completely subsumed by his own ("weak, unwise owl eyes"). In other words, he thinks he understands everyone else, but to him, other people are just mirrors that reflect his own propensities. This is why he doesn't think twice about the god-like decisions he makes. But as I reread the beginning, I found it on page 11. He knows. Of course, whether or not he believes himself to be at fault is another matter entirely.

Yet as far as ambiguity goes, I was much more perplexed by the fate of Hal Bickley than that of Frances Giddens. What had Abbott actually done? Was it merely a perceived threat, or something much more final? Again, Heald is there to lend a frightening cruelty to the scene:

So she loved her husband. Well he would fling such love from a brutal height so that nothing of its body would reach the earth.

If indeed it is a murder that has occurred, it precedes Frances' own death. But again, the town's reaction is not given. Is this yet one more example of the complicity of their silence? This event takes place in "Part Four: Abbott's Return." Is there a more sinister reason for the title? Does he, in fact, "return" to another violent act?

The various mentions of the lithium water found in the streams of Garner caught my attention as well and made me immediately think of bipolar disorder. In searching for more information, I read that lithium can be found in granite and found a page that discussed lithium's presence in water. It doesn't seem like it would affect anyone who drinks it, but the very mention of it was interesting.

Another aspect of this novel I love are the meditations on womanhood and the characters of Frances and Mrs. Heald. As tragedy nears, Frances begins to voice her own quiet resignation:

Became a woman, she forced herself to say it under her breath, and in her voice it sounded poor and defeated. She began to watch the boarders with envy.

Flipping through the book as I was writing my notes, I accidentally read this last sentence as, "She began to watch the borders with envy." Not only are her own boundaries being crossed, but elsewhere, Allio states, "Willard's voice insinuates, so that the man of the borders violates the borders." I didn't catch the interplay between "boarders" and "borders" until after I'd finished the book, and seeing how violation inverts the natural order, I also understood how the "boarders" served various purposes of misdirection as well.

Allio conveys volumes in slight passages of piercingly subtle words:

Dozens of first pregnancies were lost for modesty. The corset too tight, the housework exhausting, the appetite weakened so that the man bellowed about the waste in his house and the woman simply stopped preparing her own portion.

and

Beauty shifts its weight, thought Mrs. Heald, to lean harder upon new places, to bruise the places it uses as footholds, to leave tracks across hips and behind the knees.

and

Secrets, Frances put down despite her pledge to quit the diary, are the shadows of the plain truth between us.

Allio also succeeds in creating a wood nymph of a girl that is at the same time fully flesh and blood. She conveys her love of nature in a poignant manner that made me think of A Girl of the Limberlost or even L.M. Montgomery's beloved novels (on Anne, Emily, Pat, Jane, Valancy, Marigold, the Story Girl, Kilmeny, etc.). It was amazing to see how little sentimentality Allio uses while infusing Frances with life--a life that endures beyond her death.

There is only one thing that bothered me--the line on the back cover that reads, "When Frances's body is found in rain-swollen Blood Brook, the town begins to unravel"--as if her death is a catalyst rather than a result (or symptom). The entire novel is concerned with events before her death (including the possible violent death of another character), and in the case of Malin Nillsen's section (years after the fact), she doesn't even know Frances has died.

Old laughter

This might wind up sounding like one of those "you-had-to-be-there" things, but I think some would agree that when you read something aloud it can seem much funnier than if you were simply reading it to yourself. Such was the case with L.M. Montgomery's The Golden Road (sequel to The Story Girl, which is also excellent). The children write and edit their own magazine, contributing anything from essays on "My Most Exciting Adventure" to local gossip and fashion notes. Years ago, I would spend hours reading Montgomery's stories to my younger sisters...and for some reason, I still can't read this one with a straight face:

ESSAY ON SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare's full name was William Shakespeare. He did not always spell it the same way. He lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and wrote a great many plays. His plays are written in dialogue form. Some people think they were not written by Shakespeare but by another man of the same name. I have read some of them because our school teacher says everybody ought to read them, but I did not care much for them. There are some things in them I cannot understand. I like the stories of Valeria H. Montague in the Family Guide ever so much better. They are more exciting and truer to life. Romeo and Juliet was one of the plays I read. It was very sad. Juliet dies and I don't like stories where people die. I like it better when they all get married especially to dukes and earls. Shakespeare himself was married to Anne Hatheway. They are both dead now. They have been dead a good while. He was a very famous man.

FELICITY KING.

(PETER, MODESTLY: "I don't know much about Shakespeare myself but I've got a book of his plays that belonged to my Aunt Jane, and I guess I'll have to tackle him as soon as I finish with the Bible.")