As one begins, it's slightly disconcerting to realise this book has Anne as a young girl, although a reader going through this compilation left her youngest daughter grown up and engaged at the end of the last volume, and two of her children dead - her second son on battlefield in France in WWI.
So one has to think that Chronicles of Avonlea ought to have been included in the Anne Stories compilation definitely before Anne's House Of Dreams, and perhaps even before Anne Of The Island. It belongs with Anne Of Avonlea, in its earliest parts really, and reading it so much later is quite disconcerting. And the very first story, about Theodora Dix and Ludovic Speed, has been referred to more than once in Anne Of The Island, if not before.
But by the time one reads next couple of stories in this, one realises that these are all separate stories and aren't sequential in time either, much less all before Anne married and left. So one settles to enjoy them individually as their early readers did when they were first published.
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The Dix- Speed romance is delightful enough, especially with the last touch that's a twist.
But the next, about the Old Lady Lloyd, is touching, almost heartbreaking, from the very start. And yet, one has to wonder, did the author modify this heartwrenching story into the Lavender Lewis Irving romance, to begin with a heartache but end into something sweetened, albeit not without the loss and pain of years, life, lost?
Each In His Own Tongue is set in time long after Anne has grow up and left, and it's presumably several years after her marriage as well. The author doesnt say just how many years it has been, but when one finishes it, one hopes Felix would meet Una in time to light up her world with life and love.
Little Joscelyn returns further back to when Anne was new at Green Gables. It's again about music, this time Joscelyn being the golden voice.
The Winning Of Lucinda, next story, is set in Anne's youth, and is, unexpectedly, completely delightful, unlike the preceding stories where there were heartaches, and hardships were severe. Anne is a tangential but key figure - with similar colouring and similarly coloured dress, she is mistakenly given a message at a key moment, which she has no clue about the meaning of, or that it wasn't meant for her, by someone newly related to the host family at a wedding.
Old Man Shaw's Girl brings the heartache back with the recurring, albeit not all pervading, theme of this collection - loving heart of an older person yearning for the young, this time a father and daughter. As the author does often enough, there is a recurrence of certain heartwarming themes - here, a daughter returning a day sooner, as Anne did in an earlier volume in the collection.
Aunt Olivia's Beau opens with the said Aunt Olivia informing the young girls that she's going to marry Malcolm McPherson - the name familiar from the young days of Anne before she left Avonlea to set up her married home. Here the author does with humans what she's always fond of in her portrayals of nature - there's the golden sun of a late afternoon breaking through clouds, in that an old maid set in her neat ways, but never happy with the status, has to confront the reality of her magnificent, ardent beau unsettling her ways, neatness and life. How she manages to deal with it and overcomes herself with her heart leading, is the story.
Whether The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's has the same protagonist as the last one, isn't clear - the name here is McPherson, unlike the one before who was a niece of Olivia. The time is again back to when the Allan couple were in charge of the church as pastor and his wife. Which is to say, Anne isn't married yet. She's, in fact, in school, so it's not Mary but another McPherson, when asked to teach Sunday school, selects to teach boys, rather than face questions from Anne. Delight from go, the delight merely goes on in increasing tempo, and the mistake a reader makes assuming it's Mary McPherson is cleared as one reads on - this one is named Peter Angelina, and prefers to be called Peter! One may at first have assumed it was Mary, but no, that would be a schoolmate of Anne. This story is delightful from scratch to finish.
Pa Sloane's Purchase is another delightful story, about an old couple and an orphan baby.
The Courting of Prissy Strong might have been written earlier, since it is seemingly the germ for the Rainbow Valley tale of West sisters except for the history - here the beau is claiming Prissy again after two decades, unlike in the other case. This story is set in Anne's girlhood, though, and has the protagonist a relative of Diana, visited at a key moment by Anne visiting home from Redmond brought over by Diana, since the protagonist wished to see her. In Rainbow Valley The story was softened, unlike here where the elder sister remains a dragon. The story is quite thrilling and the end satisfactory, and the best is the last quip by the minister.
The Miracle at Carmody repeats again the pairing of old maid sisters theme with the elder dark, grim and set, while the younger one is big blue eyed, with golden curls and youth of baby face - very similar to the last story and to Rainbow Valley pairs. The little boy who they're bringing up, who has them in despair with his naughty acts and doesn't know he's naughty, is very evocative of Dave from Anne Of Avonlea. This story is about atheism turned due to a loved one cured, though, rather simplistic, unlike the conversion of Marilla due to Anne in her life.
The End of a Quarrel is yet another favourite theme of the author, a couple with a tiff separated for years, coming across one another after decades, while there's still a chance for a life together.
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Must say this author is as incapable of imagining a woman with a home of her own, and content and happy as an adult functioning normally and well adjusted in society, without portraying her as a horrible dragon of an old maid, at whatever age; any normal woman she portrays has to be either married before thirty or consider herself an old maid and hate it, and definitely is incapable of owning her own home happily, despite twenty years of earning well and a "fat bank account" - she can only be happy cleaning a man's house!
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July 16, 2020 - July 19, 2020.
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