I bought Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maud Montgomery when I was in the flurry of Anne of Green Gables and Jane Austen, reading these delightful stories of young women falling in love and living at a time that seems so uncomplicated. Although intellectually I understand that this was far from true, that life was never so simple, there are times in my life, when my own life has become too complicated, when I need to lose myself in a romanticized version of the past.I remember beginning Emily of New Moon and immediately putting it down because it was not immediately as charming or gentle as Anne of Green Gables. Emily Starr, as a literary character, was not quite the kindred spirit I had found in Anne Shirley. Emily is quieter, more melancholy perhaps. Her loss is more real because the reader experiences it along with Emily.
And yet, I recognize more of myself in Emily than I do in Anne. Her unsent letters written to her deceased father are a familiar journaling exercise and her love of language that manifests itself through poetry is glorious. There are enough parallels between the two books to feel like one is in familiar territory. Like Anne, Emily does not immediately have a relationship with the matriarch of her new home, an emotional bond she does build with her uncle. Nevertheless, there is just enough new here to make reading about Emily not overly redundant.
I closed the book wanting to immediately begin the next book in the trilogy, Emily Climbs, but I hesitate because I cannot find the third book. I am sure it is somewhere still hidden, buried in a box that has not yet been unpacked. But I am looking forward to it, curious to see how Emily’s relationships evolve and what will happen to her in the pages of the next two volumes of her life.
