Thanks to both Emmalita and Mrs. Julien for their passionate reviews of this book that led me to track it down. Thanks to Interlibrary Loan, I have a yellowing copy from 1993 with some seriously sappy back cover art. However, that did not dampen my enjoyment of this 1926 gem.
As the novel begins, Valancy Sterling is living a life of quiet and cowed desperation. She’s 29 years old, living with her mother, and surrounded by relatives that alternately snub and belittle her. They believe and so she believes that she is destined to be a spinster. Her only escape is through her imagination. She has built up an alternative home in her mind, the Blue Castle, that provides everything she lacks in her real life—beauty, love, excitement, etc. Lately, she has also been enjoying the “nature books” of John Foster, which she is grudgingly allowed to read by her family because they are not novels. She loves their descriptions because they offer her another world she’s not allowed to engage in.
However, Valancy’s life changes when she goes to the doctor and finds out the strange heart pains she’s been having are actually deadly serious and she only has a short time to live. This news, though shocking, also frees Valancy to make changes in her life and to not care what her family thinks. I won’t go into too much detail here because part of the fun is seeing how Valancy begins to come into her own and her family’s shocked (and comical) response to the former wallflower’s gumption.
Though clearly of its time, I was also surprised by how modern parts of this novel felt. Though Montgomery is clearly skewering small town life in Canada in the early part of the 20th century, there are a lot of wonderful parallels to be made to now. Finally, this novel is just a lot of fun. It’s been decades since I read Anne of Green Gables, but reading The Blue Castle made me both want to re-read that series but also learn more about L.M. Montgomery.
