Anne of Windy Willows (by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

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Although I have dipped into many of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s ‘Anne’ books fairly regularly over the past few decades, it must be close to thirty years since I read ‘Anne of Windy Willows’. My only memory of it was that it involved rather a lot of letters, and in general I’m not a fan of epistolary novels.

However, I’m reading the series in order at present, about one per month. Since I finished the third book, ‘Anne of the Island’, at the end of July I decided to read the fourth one - which is also sometimes known as ‘Anne of Windy Poplars’ - in the past few days.

This book covers Anne’s three years as head of a school, working and saving money as she waits for her fiancé Gilbert to finish his medical training. And while there are several letters to Gilbert expressing Anne’s personal opinions and impressions, there’s also plenty of direct narrative.

The first year is the most interesting, I thought. Anne’s letters explain the people she has met, and how she found her delightful boarding house with Aunt Kate, Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew. These feel like comfortably caricatured people, reminding me somewhat of people from Elizabeth Goudge’s novels. Their home is called Windy Willows; Rebecca is their housekeeper and confidante. She works hard, although she isn’t much younger than the aunts.

Anne’s first few months are plagued with difficulties, as she encounters the powerful Pringle family. They had wanted someone else to take the headship, and they have a lot of influence. Anne is particularly stressed by fifteen-year-old Jen Pringle, one of her students, who is brilliantly clever and also rude; yet Anne cannot introduce any kind of punishment or disciplinary consequence without one of the family overruling it. 

She does manage to win one battle when Jen pulls out at the last minute from a starring role in a play; but it doesn’t endear her to the family. It takes something quite different for the mood to change, and it does so just in time. Anne was set to resign at the end of the year as she was finding them so difficult to deal with.

Then there’s Katherine, the deputy head, who is dowdy, bad-tempered and totally resistant to any overtures of friendship. Yet Anne’s intuition tells her that Katherine is lonely and hurting. She’s not sure she’ll ever discover why, but her natural generosity and compassion eventually find a way through.

Anne gets to know a young girl next door, who is brought up by a strict grandmother and even stricter housekeeper. Yet Anne knows at once that little Elizabeth is a kindred spirit. She’s full of imagination and creative ideas, and longs, above everything, for her father to come and find her. Her mother died when she was born, and her father went to work abroad. 

Although Anne is a teacher, there’s not a great deal about her time in the classroom, other than a few snippets in her letters featuring amusing anecdotes, or mistakes that children have made. Once the Pringles have become benign to her, life at school seems to progress without much of interest. 

The book is in three sections; the first one, covering Anne’s first year, is the longest. Her second year progresses with fewer problems, and she’s in familiar surroundings. So there isn’t a whole lot to report. And in part three, her third year, threads are tied up, people are reunited, and she returns to Green Gables and the prospect of getting married.

It’s not the most exciting book; it almost feels like Anne’s story is on hold, and I don’t think it would have mattered if it had never been written. Apparently it was something of an afterthought, not written until there were six others in the series. It’s all character-driven; some of the plots rely on coincidence, and some of the people Anne meets are extremely talkative - more so than she is - imparting pages of information which do nothing to advance the plot, nor reveal anything about any of the main characters. 

And yet it’s a nice, gentle read, with one or two scenes that are extremely moving. I enjoyed reading it - other than skimming some of the lengthy monologues - and look forward to continuing the series next month. Recommended as part of the series, if you like reading about Anne, but it can easily be left out. 

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