3.5* ( )

Hrm.
Here's my recommendation: If you hold L.M. Montgomery's books enshrined in your heart and the Anne books have taken you to a happy place from childhood on, then stick with the 8 Anne books, and perhaps the short story collection "The Road to Yesterday," but don't feel bad about not reading "The Blythes Are Quoted."

Here's why: "The Blythes Are Quoted" is the same book as "The Road To Yesterday," except with some depressing stuff added.

L.M. Montgomery put this collection of stories together right before she died, but then it wasn't printed till the 1970s, when the darker parts had been excised.

None of the stories are ABOUT the Blythes; rather, they're about any number of their neighbors. But mention of the Blythes is dragged in at every possible moment... hence the title. Much as I adore the entire Blythe family, I have to admit that this plot device is a little tiring, especially when at times it's literally, every paragraph, "Susan Baker says," "Mrs. Dr. Blythe says," "Walter Blythe says," "Dr. Blythe says," etc. One can tell that L.M. Montgomery was thereby doing what was expected of her by giving the public more Blythes, however indirectly.

Some of the stories are very sweet, but as I said, you can get them in "The Road to Yesterday." The only story that is NOT in that volume is the first one, which is a pretty creepy, dark tale (that ends up with a reasonable explanation), but which had an ending I disliked.

The other bits that are exclusive to "The Blythes Are Quoted" are the interludes that describe Anne reading her own and Walter's poems to her family at Ingleside, and then usually two or three of the family offer a brief remark on the poem. Some of the poems are nice and home-like, but others are decidedly disturbing. The saddest thing to me is the family's realization at the end, that the Second World War was upon them and that the sacrifices and lives lost in the First World War were utterly in vain. L.M. Montgomery died in 1942, so that sense of uncertainty and failure was the last thing she knew.

It's sad.

I prefer my Blythes in their original 8 books. ( )

Publishers received the typescript of this book April 24, 1942, the day Montgomery died from a drug overdose (possibly suicide). This ninth "Anne" book represents a new experiment for Montgomery's storytelling. The book contains 15 short stories that reference the Blythe family. Poems attributed to Anne and Walter and commentary from the family loosely weave together the stories.

Publishers sat on the book for 30 years. In 1974 an abridged version was published as The Road to Yesterday. This version left out all of the family's commentary, removed one of the stories (later published in another short story collection), removed all but one of the poems, reordered the stories, and removed material from some of the stories. Often, the removed material is darker and more pessimistic than most of Montgomery's material.

This book shows Montgomery's struggle with the two world wars. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is before WWI and the second book occurs after WWI and into to WWII. The second half of the book is decidedly more grim than the first half. Anne's poetry shows more pessimism, and you often see Anne on the verge of breaking down as she reads Walter's poetry.

The two poems that bookend the text highlight the struggle. Walter's patriotic poem "The Piper", which made him famous in Rilla of Ingleside starts the book. The book ends with "The Aftermath", a grim poem about death and war that Walter wrote just before his death. The later poem sets up the dialog that ends the book. Anne says, "I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back. He could never have lived with his memories ... and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust ...". Montgomery left this final poem and dialog out of some manuscripts, but it truly highlights the ambiguity present throughout The Blythes are Quoted. ( )

Dark. Far darker than previous titles in the series. But definitely worthy of a place on the bookshelf. Somehow, when the stories are framed by vignettes of the Blythe family grieving for Walter, the book hangs together better and makes more sense than Road to Yesterday. ( )

What a melancholy book. (There will be some spoilers here for the story of the Blythe family: be warned.) A collection of stories in which the Blythes are more or less tangential – "quoted", bracketed by post-Great War snippets of Blythe conversation and poetry by Anne and Walter. Actually, in a fair number of them the Blythes are loathed, which feels strange – and, to LMM's credit, is not necessarily an indicator of whether we ought to like the character doing the loathing. Some are bad 'uns – but not all.

Oh, Walter.

There are some strange patterns in the stories collected in The Blythes Are Quoted. Those who don't like Anne ("Uncle Stephen did not like the Blythes ... he said he did not like educated women" … "Nobody in the Brewster clan, it seemed, approved of the Blythes" … "Miss Shelley could not conceive of Mrs. Blythe cherishing bitterness for thirty years. She liked her but she thought her too shallow for that.") and who feel slighted by them ("I hinted it to Dr. Blythe ... and such a snub as he gave me! And Dr. Blythe can give snubs when he wants to, I can assure you.") As I said, it's unsettling to run into this attitude.

Then there is an alarming theme of animal abuse, looked at completely differently than we do now ("Even if you'd taken the money and burned the binder house I'd have wanted you" – this to someone who killed a dog and a cat and chickens and a goat; "'what he did to the kitten' ... That memory was intolerable") – and, on a similar track, fox farms. In three separate stories foxes are mentioned as a commodity. Odd.

There was also a sort of a theme of unresolved questions. "Epworth Rectory. I don't think that mystery has ever been solved." "Susan, to herself:-'I could tell them the story of that fiddle if I liked. But I won't. It's too sad.'" (Thank you, Susan – there was enough sadness in this book as it was.)

There are still all the things I've always loved about L.M. Montgomery's writing: humor ("Chrissie felt much better. 'In about twenty years or so I'll be pretty well over it,' she said") and pathos (not always a bad thing) and solid story-telling. But this is the dark side, keeping uppermost in my mind throughout the book that Lucy Maud took her own life. Grief and haunting and regret and pain … there are still happy endings. But the interspersed Blythe reminiscences and conversation are a reminder that "happily ever after" never takes into account wars and the deaths of children. It was surprisingly hard to read … I don't think The Blythes Are Quoted is going to be part of my semi-annual LMM-reread. ( )