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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An atypical "Anne" book but one of Montgomery's best, September 4, 2001
I really think the only reason not to find "Rainbow Valley" one of L. M. Montgomery's better novels in the Anne series is because it obviously has the least to do with Anne or her children. Once Anne finally married Gilbert in "Anne's House of Dreams" (1917), Montgomery seemed to be at a loss as what to do with her delightful red-headed orphan now that she was a mother. So when this book was written in 1919 she focused on the four Meredith children who beloned to new Presbyterian minister, John Meredith, who was a widower. I can certainly see where some readers would be less than pleased with this particular direction, but the scene near the end of the novel where little Una Meredith communes with her late mother's wedding dress before going off to get her father a wife is as touching as anything Montgomery ever wrote.
To be clear, "Rainbow Valley" is the fifth of the original six Anne books written by Montgomery, which ended in 1920 with "Rilla of Ingleside." It would not be until 1936 that she would write "Anne of Windy Poplars," which became the fourth book in the series and took us back to when Anne was engaged to Gilbert and waiting for him to finish medical school. In 1939 she wrote her final novel, "Anne of Ingleside," which is the least of the Anne books, taking place before "Rainbow Valley" and engaging in some heavy handed foreshadowing as to what would happen to her characters. This 1919 book is dedicated: "To the memory of Goldwin Lapp, Robert Brookes and Morley Shier who made the supreme sacrifice that the happy valleys of their home land might be kept sacred from the ravage of the invader." So clearly Montgomery was thinking of the next book she would write, that would take place during the First World War.
At this point in time Anne Shirley has been married to Gilbert Blythe for 15 years and is now the mother of six children: James (called Jem), Walter, Nan, Diana (Di), Shirley, and Marilla (Rilla). The Mrs. and the Doctor return home to Four Winds Harbor from a trip to Europe and discover the new minister and his four children: Jerry, Faith, Una and Carl. Without a mother and a father given over to deams, the manse children tend to run a bit wild. However, it seems that when they try to do their very best, it occasions the most local gossip, and the children are worried they will cost their father his job. Of course the Meredith and Blythe children become good friends, and the manswe children have Anne's stamp of approval, which is good enough for us. Two major plots in the novel involve Mary Vance, an orphan girl who finds an unexpected home and continues to cause trouble for all concerned, and Rosemary West, a young woman who John Meredith falls for but whose sister Ellen does not want to be alone and causes romantic complications that Una needs to iron out in the end.
All in all, "Rainbow Valley" reminds me more of "The Story Girl" and "The Golden Road" than any of the other Anne books, with the Meredith children having a series of humorous misadventures. I am also impressed because as you can tell from the ending when Walter Blythe speaks of "The Piper," that Montgomery is already committed to writing about what happens to these children during World War I in her next Anne book, "Rilla of Ingleside." Even though it is atypical "Rainbow Valley" is my second favorite book in the Anne series and I am the proud owner of a first edition copy with the green book cover and the illustration by M.L. Kirk of not Anne but rather Rosemary West, captioned "Rosemary West stepped aside from teh by-path and stood in that spell-weaving place" (page 131).
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is one of my favourites!, April 23, 2000
By A Customer
This book is great! You need to have read all of the Anne of Green Gables books to understand it. Its about Annes cheeky children who meet the new vicars children.The vicars kids are very naughty and their father is in his own little world most of the time, and doesn't spend much time with them. Annes kids really like them and have adventures with them. The vicars kids also have a runaway orphan who lives with them. She is very outgoing and seems quite common.The children don't know what to make of her at first, but she soon becomes their friend. This is my favourite book out of the Anne series I and would reccomend it to anyone.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's hard to stop laughing, August 3, 2004
I was disappointed with the previous segment of the series, so I was not expecting much from Rainbow Valley. Indeed, I put off reading it for a year. I'm sorry now that I did so.
Montgomery returns to the magic and lyricism of the beginning of the Green Gable series. But she does it by leaving Anne. There is only a little about Anne's family, and hardly anything about Anne herself in this book. It is mostly about another family, that of John Meredith, the minister, a widower. By telling the story of this family, and an orphan they befriend, we see some angst in life, some troubles. Which was exactly the problem with the story of Anne's family. She went through many troubles as a girl, but as a mature mother, she had everything perfect. The family was perfect. The marriage was perfect. And it was all quite boring. This is why they don't write about perfect people in the adventure stories that Anne loves. But the Merediths do not have a perfect life, and the troubles they experience, and how they attempt to resolve them, create spice.
These are very believable characters created by Montgomery, and a believable small town focused continually on gossip. It is one of the rare books that does not portray a minister and his family as evil, nor as perfect, but simply as real- perhaps because the book was written in 1919. How the children of the family respond to an emotionally absent father is intriguing, and Faith Meredith's actions the most interesting of them all. I read this on the train from Casablanca to Tangier, and the Moroccans in the train car with me gave me many strange looks as I could not stop laughing uproariously at Faith's actions, nor explain to them what was so amazingly funny.
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