[.ca] Puffin Classics Anne Of Green Gables 03 Anne Of The Island (ISBN 0140367772)

A remarkable girl's life in the 1880s:
I agree with the rest of the reviewers that this book is a page turner, suspenseful, fun, romantic, and all those other fine things. But what I come back to is that this is a story of a bunch of country girls going to COLLEGE in the 1880s. Not twenty years before we had the March girls in "Little Women" who never seemed to seriously consider college as a womens' venue. Yet here we have an actively coed college a few hundred miles north of Concord in Nova Scotia. Montgomery alludes to the presence of at least one professor who disapproved of coeds, but they were clearly an accepted part of the community. And it's funny to see both how much and how little college life has changed. Colleges don't have a coed's dressing room any more, and you rarely see ball gowns, or balls for that matter. But there are still lots of students like Anne attending on a shoestring from one year to the next, relying on a summer teaching job this year, a scholarship the next, and a surprise inheritance after that. Coeds (a long forgotten word) still juggle schoolwork and and social schedules, and have surprise visitors drop in when they're least prepared. When Anne announces she's made money selling an article, her roomie replies, "Let's go get drunk!" I suppose that's the most subversive line I've seen in a Montgomery work, but it also shows how little campus life has changed. And it also leaves me wondering what Anne might have been like after a few glasses of wine. This may also be the most quotable Montgomery book. I cited the "I can't keep secrets -- it's no use to try" in a recent publication of my own, and that's a pretty pale example. Real gems include "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I jest sits," or the immortal "Facts are stubborn things, but not half so stubborn as fallacies." This would make a terrific film. You don't need a Megan Follows for this, you need someone else. For all her good work in other episodes, she was never quite tall enough nor whimsical enough in style to play this sort of Anne.

a 12 year old reader:
this is one of the best of the Anne of Green Gables books. from what Anne thought of Gibert Blythe then to what she thinks at the end of the book! You can`t put the book down once you get into it! There`s alot of funny things in the book, like when Phil says `lets go get drunk`. I better stop before i tell you about Pattys Place, Davey and Dora, and Roy......

Wonderful:
If you like Anne of Green Gables in any way, you have to read the other books in order to see her grow up. She stills continue to get in trouble, romance with Gilbert continues, just about anything that can happen, happens. These books fulfill everything that you could ever want out of a book.

Well....:
It was ok, although I thought it could have been much much better. Anne goes through a lot as far as self-realization, especially at the end. My favorite part is when she goes back to her birthplace and discovers the home her parents lived in, in Bolingbrook. Gilbert's character needed more developing, just like it does in all the other Anne books. I think he's a real bore, but wouldn't be if she would just develope him more. I wanted more of a finale too.....more of them talking, etc. It was just too predictable....that she would fall out of love with Roy and go back to Gilbert. I wish she would endeavor more to be ambitious and she and Gilbert would discuss that. There are other Anne books that are better, such as Rilla of Ingleside.

Anne of the Island rates a four with me!:
I thought this book was a good book. Towards the end I couldn't put it down because I had to know if it turned out all right with Anne and Gilbert. At the begining I thought I would HATE it but I told myself that all of the "Anne" books start kind of slow at least the first two did. So I just read it. And I loved it.