Anne of Green Gables is a timeless classic in which I never get bored of. Anne is a lively and passionate girl, one of the most imaginative and detailed characters I have read about. She is also one of the chattiest that I have ever read about, talking for an entire ten minutes without stopping, which is quite impressive considering she’s an orphan, yet an increasingly optimistic one at that. And so, the story begins when she is mistakenly adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.
Anne is delighted to have a place she can finally call home, and is equally enamoured with the beautiful, late 19th century Prince Edward Island (in Canada). The story revolves around Anne’s life at Green Gables and with her stay with siblings Matthew and Marilla. There are highs, lows, a lot of mistakes and many formed friendships and rivalry’s, along with Anne’s frequent and funny antics, which many a time wears the ever-suffering Marilla out with annoyance, and me with laughter.
This book has been a firm favourite of mine for some time now, as the settings and events are written in a richly detailed and delicately charming tone, and the characters are presented in full, with likeable and interesting personalities, but also with a great deal of character development as the story goes. Anne’s quirky nature is instantly loved by many at school, and clearly shows which characters are there to be liked, and others to cause trouble, but all are on the whole very well presented. My personal favourites include Marilla, whose sharp and practical nature starts shifting almost instantly when exposed to Anne’s ever-present chatter, Diana, who quickly becomes a best friend and constant companion to Anne and always enjoys her vivid imagination, and Matthew, whom Anne often refers to as a ‘fellow kindred spirit’ , and known throughout the story as being extremely shy yet very generous and affectionate towards Anne.
I would recommend this book to most people since it is extremely well written and lyrically versed, although most nature-lovers and people who prefer more historically based novels may enough it more than others. Age-wise, I would say that 11+ is the best age to start tackling more classic books, and this one would be one of the best to start with. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
The Book Girl 📚
