Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Title:  Anne of Ingleside

Author: L.M. Montgomery

Read by:  Barbara Barnes

Publisher: Dreamscape Audio

Length: Approximately 11 hours and 40 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com. 

Anne of Ingleside is the sixth novel of the Anne of Green Gables series.  Two years ago, I started to listen to the audiobooks of this series as I have always loved these novels.  For some reason, I stopped at book five, but with the craziness of the world these days, I went back to this series that always makes me happy and decided now is the time to finish listening to the audiobooks.

In Anne of Ingleside, the story is still about Anne and Gilbert, but the focus has started to shift to their six children: Jem, Nan, Diana, Walter, Shirley, and the newest arrival, Rilla.  As I’ve gotten older, reading the books is a different experience than when I was younger.  This book always fell through the cracks for me as a teen as I was looking more for the romance and action of the other novels.  Now as a mother myself, I enjoyed and understood many parts of the story that I didn’t as a teen.  I also loved the individual experiences of the kids as well.  I feel like L.M. Montgomery remembered what is was like to be a child and how something that seems small for an adult, can be everything to a child.

At the start of the novel, Gilbert’s Aunt Mary Maria has come to stay for two weeks, but the two weeks soon stretches into a year.  Gilbert doesn’t want to kick out a relative, but Aunt Mary Maria Blythe has something negative to say about just about everything.  With Anne having Rilla during Mary Maria’s stay, it adds an extra stress onto all of the family members.  I thought these sections were hilarious.  Especially now as an adult I’m had Aunt Mary Maria’s of my own in my family that visit and have nothing nice to say.  I just can’t imagine an entire year of it.  The birthday party that put an end to her visit was hilarious.  I felt for Anne who is just trying to be nice, but there is no pleasing the Mary Maria’s of the world.

I loved the scenes where people were telling stories.  In particular Walter listens in to all of the stories about the inhabitants in town.  I was Walter as a youth and loved to sit around and listen to the stories my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents had to tell.  This reminded me of them.

The kids learned many important lessons and had adventures during this novel and I greatly enjoyed them.  I felt bad for Jem who had bad luck with dogs and for Diana who had bad luck in friends.  Anne and Gilbert’s marriage matures and they face their own insecurities.  I thought it was a very honest look at marriage at their fifteenth anniversary being at seventeen years myself.  I also enjoyed that characters from the previous novels visited or were mentioned.

Anne of Ingleside was written after the final two books in the series:  Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside.  I admit that the end where Anne laments about how the children are growing too fast and the book had a foreshadowing of Walter’s fate really struck me.  It brought a tear to my eye.

Barbara Barnes was a good narrator and brought unique voices to the characters.  This was a very enjoyable audiobook.

Overall, Anne of Ingleside is a good book that continues Anne’s story while starting to tell the story of her children.  The book made me really happy.  It’s a great story to listen to when times are troubled.