Holiday reading

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently, Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.

"Just a little below the Catholic Church," said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy?

The Blue Castle is funny, irreverent, romantic and more than a little far-fetched. I loved it. It's difficult to review without spoilers, so no peeking if you're planning to read it!

***spoiler***

Valancy is 29, unmarried, and treated as a joke and a failure by her extended family. After suffering pain in her chest she visits her doctor who tells her she has one year to live. She decides to make the most of her final year and rejects her family, leaves home to nurse a sick school-friend and proposes to the local bad boy, Barney Snaith. Marriage to Barney brings her happiness - her own 'blue castle' - until she starts to wonder about the diagnosis from her doctor ...

***spoiler***

Lucy Maud Montgomery did not set The Blue Castle on Prince Edward Island. It is set in Muskoka in Ontario, Canada, where Montgomery spent a holiday which inspired the novel.

I also read Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek in Brighton last week. It is a beautifully written novel and I couldn't put it down, but I think Blaming is still my favourite. This Virago Modern Classics edition has an introduction by the novelist, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Anybody read her?

At last ...

... it's arrived! My local independent bookshop has managed to get a copy of L M Montgomery's adult novel The Blue Castle. I've only been waiting 5 years! I first heard about this novel on the chicklit forums where it has quite a following. I'm going to take it to Brighton with me next week and I hope to read it on the beach.

Nightingale Wood is a sweet fairy tale about thwarted love with a cast of female lead characters, Viola, named by her Shakespearean father, Hetty, bookish and rebellious, Madge whose whole life revolves around her dog and Tina, my favourite, who married her father's chauffeur. Set in the late 1930's there are lots of references to Lyons Corner House and Woolworths but Gibbons never lets us forget the horrors of wartime England and the rise of Communism.

Reading resolution

I've been meaning to read Anne of Green Gables for years and never quite got around to it. This edition has an introduction and front cover illustration by Lauren Child. I do like Child's contemporary illustrations for classic children's books.

So, my reading resolution for what's left of 2008 is to familiarise myself with the work of L M Montgomery.