#CBR10 Book 83: "Kilmeny of the Orchard" by L.M. Montgomery

Page count: 145 pages
Rating: 1 star

#CBR10Bingo: This Old Thing (published in 1910)

Spoiler warning! There will be a number of spoilers for the plot of this book, because the only way I will be able to fully vent my spleen on this atrocious piece of writing is by going into minute detail about the MANY things I found dumb, objectionable or downright offensive in this book. You might as well allow yourself to be spoiled, this book is bad and you don't actually want to waste time reading it.

Eric Marshall has just graduated college and knows that his future is secure. He is going to work for his wealthy father, but before he starts in the family business, he agrees to help out an old school friend for a while. Substituting as a teacher on Prince Edward Island for a season, Eric settles in nicely, popular among the locals.

One day, wandering in an overgrown and abandoned orchard, Eric comes across a beautiful young woman playing the violin. Kilmeny Gordon is mute and has lived an extremely sheltered life on the farm belonging to her aunt and uncle. There was a scandal surrounding her birth and until Kilmeny's mother died a few years ago, the girl was barely allowed outside the house. At first, she's scared of Eric, but they begin to get to know one another, and it doesn't take too long for Eric to realise he wants to make Kilmeny his wife.

When one of the squares for CBR10Bingo required me to read a book published before 1918, I pondered for a while. Then, inspired by my love for L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books, her Emily books, and The Blue Castle, I decided to see if she'd written any other books I could try. This one fit the bill, being published in 1910. When I recently mentioned to my BFF Lydia that I'd read a more obscure Montgomery novel, she exclaimed: "It wasn't Kilmeny of the Orchard, was it? That book is awful!" How I wish I'd spoken to her BEFORE I read this book.

Let's start by listing the positives. It wasn't very long, so I was able to finish it rather quickly, even though I deeply regretted my choice from early on. I'm pretty sure I've found my "Worst book of 2018". I desperately hope that nothing I read for the rest of the year is worse than this book. It will also allow me to really get my vitriol on in my review, which tends to make for amusing reading for others, and an easier time writing for me. That's about it. I can't think of anything else positive. No, wait, there are two pretty decent female supporting characters in the book. Marshall's landlady and Kilmeny's aunt are both good (no, I'm not going back to check their names - I've wasted enough time on this book already).

So why was this such an awful reading experience? To begin with, my expectations of L.M. Montgomery's work, based on the books mentioned above, had not prepared me for something quite this dismal. I loved the Anne and Emily books growing up, and was utterly delighted by The Blue Castle. There is NOTHING delightful in this book.

Eric Marshall is a rich, privileged dude bro, utterly convinced of his own greatness and superiority. He comes across a young woman (who he keeps referring to as "a child", even though it's established early on that she's 18 and he's 24, certainly not a terrible age difference back in the early 20th Century) who is initially scared of him, and keeps meeting her in secret, unbeknownst to her family, and has to be lectured by his landlady about why this is an inappropriate and dishonourable thing.

Kilmeny Gordon is an orphan. Her mother, the apple of her father's eye, married a man her family disapproved of and then discovered that he was probably a bigamist. She had no idea about this when she married him, but there was a scandal nonetheless. Returning to her family, she gave her father the silent treatment for months after she felt judged by him, refusing to speak even when he made himself more sick on his own death bed to plead with her to forgive him. Kilmeny's family believe that is why she's been mute her entire life. Despite being apparently completely exquisitely beautiful (this seems to be the first thing everyone is struck by upon first seeing her), Kilmeny believes herself to be ugly, because her angry, bitter mother always told her so, and made sure there were no mirrors in the house so the girl could see her reflection. Living an extremely sheltered life, Kilmeny uses a little slate to write on, and otherwise "expresses herself through her violin". Not that she's ever been tutored in playing it, you understand, but she nevertheless plays it wonderfully and makes up beautiful little tunes that spellbind Eric.

Eric, who keeps thinking of Kilmeny as a "darling child" is of course extremely taken with her beauty and grace and general awesomeness, and keeps meeting with her in the abandoned orchard near her aunt and uncle's farm. After a stern talking to by his landlady, he realises that he has to do the right thing and go speak to her relatives, as consorting with a young unmarried lady every evening is deeply inappropriate and creepy. Of course, he kisses her (entirely without her consent) before he ever gets to that point.

Of course, by the time he goes to see Kilmeny's guardians, their cranky foster son ("of Italian descent" and therefore clearly seen as terribly volatile and almost a bit sub-human), who's been spying on Kilmeny and Eric's meetings (because of course he too has a creepy crush on her, that she's entirely unaware of), has tattled and they've locked her in her room and are none too happy to see Eric. Once he exclaims that he wants to marry Kilmeny (despite her terribly inconvenient muteness, he's such a champ!), they are pretty much mollified. However, Kilmeny, for all that she claims to return Eric's feelings, refuses his proposal, as he couldn't possibly be saddled with a mute woman for a wife.

Oh noes, how could this book ever get a "happy" ending, I hear you ask. Well, don't fret. Of course one of Eric's best friends is an amazing doctor who specialises in vocal maladies. He comes to examine Kilmeny (again being utterly transfixed by her beauty), and claims there is nothing actually wrong with her, but that she will need some sort of sharp shock to be induced into speaking. When her cousin/foster brother/creepy stalker gets overcome with jealousy and is about to bludgeon Eric to death with an axe, Kilmeny fears for him enough that she shouts out a warning. The dastardly Italian is overpowered (and flees town in the night shortly after, never to be heart from again), and Kilmeny, who has never spoken a single solitary word before in her life, can miraculously speak. Fluently and with no difficulty, because of course she can.

There is one last hurdle in the way of our young couple's happiness. Eric's father believes him to have fallen for some country temptress only interested in his fortune. He comes to the town to dissuade his son from what he believes to be an inappropriate match - but it's ok! He has only to lay eyes on the comely Kilmeny (seriously, he doesn't even SPEAK to her) before he welcomes her to the family.

Seriously, this book is utter dreck. It's sexist, racist, patronising, it weirdly fetishises Kilmeny's muteness, innocence and ability to play violin. The whole backstory about Kilmeny's parentage and childhood is bonkers and then there's her cousin/foster brother, apparently abandoned on her aunt and uncle's farm by itinerant Italians when he was a baby. So he's been raised by them, alongside her, but creepily believes that he will be able to marry her, and becomes crazy jealous when he realises she loves someone else. His sullen behaviour is written off as due to his unfortunate background and no one seems to concerned that he was about to axe murder someone. This book is extremely bad, yet somehow has an average rating of 3.69 on Goodreads (with nearly 6000 ratings).

I did just remember one more positive thing - I didn't have to pay a penny for the book. It's available free from Project Gutenberg. Even free, it's not worth your time. Stay away from it, if you value your time, even a little bit.

Judging a book by its cover: This book has had a number of covers over the years, this is the one that was attached to the free edition I downloaded. Some things seem accurate - Kilmeny is female and has dark hair. She loves flowers and picks a lot of them. Apart from that, this woman looks WAY too old to be Kilmeny, she's got a strange buxom matronly thing going with what she's wearing - generally I dislike this cover. But it's ok, because I very much dislike the book it's attached to as well.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 24: "Anne of Green Gables" by L.M. Montgomery

Page count: 320 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 24 mins
Rating: 5 stars

Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are a middle-aged brother and sister who live together and manage the farm of Green Gables on Prince Edward Island in Canada. They intend to take in a small orphan boy to be of help to them on the farm, but due to a mix-up, little eleven-year-old Anne Shirley is sent to them instead. Matthew, who is extremely shy, especially around women, nonetheless warms to the loquacious and imaginative child and after hearing a bit about the hardships the orphan girl has suffered before she arrived with the Cuthberts, Marilla doesn't have the heart to send her away either. She makes Matthew promise that he won't "stick his oar in" when it comes to the raising of the girl and sets about trying to teach the impulsive, talkative, rather flightly girl to be a useful and well-behaved little person.

Anne strives to be good, but at least initially, fails more often than not. She has a unique knack for getting into scrapes. She's deeply self-conscious about her pale skin, her freckles and her long red hair. She loses her temper with Marilla's best friend Mrs. Lynde, when that woman has the nerve to call her an "ugly skinny thing" and she breaks her slate over handsome schoolmate Gilberth Blythe's head when he makes the mistake of pulling one of her braids and calling her "Carrots" to try to get her attention (the poor boy is clearly infatuated with her). While she apologises to Mrs. Lynde and forgives her, she does no such thing with Gilbert and proceeds to consider him an enemy for five long years before finally making up. 

Anne comes up with imaginative names for all the geographic features in Avonlea, wanting things to be as romantic as possible. She learns to deal with her red hair and her plain dresses by imagining herself to have raven tresses and puffed sleeves, like the other little girls. She makes a life-long friend in neighbour Diana Barry, but is forbidden to play or speak with her for a long while when she accidentally gets Diana drunk on cordial wine (thinking it was raspberry preserve). She bakes a cake for the minister's wife flavoured with liniment rather than vanilla when she has a cold and dyes her hair a hideous shade of green, having been tricked into buying hair dye by a travelling peddler.

This first book, the audio book of which I got in an Audible sale last November, covers the first five years of Anne's time with Marilla and Matthew and was one of my favourite books growing up. I have actually lost count of how many times I read the books about lovely and impetuous Anne Shirley, first in Norwegian and later in English. I was delighted, but not actually all that surprised to discover that the book still holds up and is just as wonderful and eventful as I remembered. I had not remembered that the first book covered such a space of time, and unfortunately I had also managed to repress (most likely) the very sad events towards the end of the book. Not going to lie, I sobbed loudly while finishing the book on the sofa last night and can't imagine anyone not being moved by the grief that touches Anne's life after she's graduated school.

I hope to one day have a girl of my own that I can share this lovely book with. If I don't, I certainly hope that one of my two nieces appreciates it (they will if they know what's good for them). I really want to visit Prince Edward Island (like I loved visiting one of the many Laura Ingalls Wilder museums when I was in the US a few years ago) some time and really bask in the surroundings of one of my most beloved fictional characters.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR4 Book 28: "The Blue Castle" by L.M. Montgomery

Page count: 224 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: March 16th, 2012
Date finished: March 17th, 2012

Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine, unmarried, and constantly reminded of said sad state by her overbearing and oppressive family, who belittle her, treat her like a child and unfavourably compare her to her younger, prettier cousin Olive. She's terrified of putting a foot wrong for fear of earning the disapproval of her judgemental mother or some other relative, and her only solace is her daydreams about her Blue Castle, where she's surrounded by beauty, treated like a princess and courted by handsome suitors.

Having snuck away to see a doctor (other than the regular one the Sterlings always see!) because of chest pains, Valancy receives a letter telling her that she has a serious heart complaint, and that she most likely has less than a year left to live. Any sudden shock or great exertion may worsen the condition and shorten her already brief life expectancy. Realising that she has never really lived, merely existed, and miserably at that, Valancy decides to live out the rest of her short life unconstrained by her family's judgement. She starts refusing to do chores that she hates, speaks her mind honestly at family functions and convinces the entire Stirling family that she has lost her mind.

Things go from bad to worse when she leaves her mother's house and takes up residence in the house of a drunken widower, to act as his housekeeper, and tend to his dying daughter, who was one of her childhood friends. Poor Cissy had a child out of wedlock (now dead) and was ostracised by all polite society in the little town where they live. Now her lungs are failing her, and Valancy does her best to cook and clean and take care of her, rekindling their friendship and blithely ignoring the censure of her relatives. While taking care of Cissy and Roaring Abel (Cissy's father), Valancy also makes the acquaintance of Barney Snaith, who most of the town (including the Stirling clan) is convinced is the father of Cissy's dead child, a bank robber, swindler, adulterer and/or even murderer. Valancy shocks them all by going on several dates with him.

When Cissy finally dies, the Stirling clan breathe a sigh of relief and are sure will stop her shocking behaviour and move back home to her mother. Instead, she confesses to Barney Snaith that she's in love with him, and asks him to marry her. She assures him that she doesn't expect him to return her feelings, and since she is terminally ill, he won't have to stay married to her for very long. Having told him about her miserable life before she became Cissy's housekeeper and nurse, Barney agrees that she deserves some happiness in her life, and agrees to the marriage. When he takes her home to the wooden island he owns, and Valancy sees the little cabin surrounded by trees and shadows evening mists, it's so like the Blue Castle of her imagination that she's convinced she's made the right choice and nothing but happiness will fill the rest of her days. But then she finds out that she was wrongly diagnosed, and her chest pains were not at all as serious as expected. She's no longer dying, how can she tell Barney the truth?

To say that I loved L.M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books as a girl would be an enormous understatement. I've lost count of the number of times I've read the books (the latter ones where she and Gilbert have a whole host of kids not as many), and I also loved the TV adaptation, and the Road to Avonlea series starring Sarah Polley. So when my friend Lydia asked me whether I'd read The Blue Castle, one of the few adult works Montgomery wrote (and the only one not set on Prince Edward Island, according to Wikipedia), I was delighted with the prospect of a new discovery. Having tracked down an e-book copy, I read the book in every spare moment I had available, and it's a cleverly written, funny and touching little romance that I can see myself rereading again and again. Valancy is a wonderful character, and you wish her every happiness in the world. To see her escape the disapproval of her stifling family and find self realisation and romance is wonderful, and any fan of Montgomery should track down a copy of the book and indulge themselves with this delightful story.