In the Poet's Den Book

I have always absolutely adored L.M. Montgomery as an author (and even though Montgomery's Anne Shirley is perhaps as a literary character not quite as dear and as close to my heart and soul as for example her Emily of New Moon, Jane of Lantern Hill and The Story Girl, still both the Anne of Green Gables series and Anne herself do rank amongst my personal all time favourites). Therefore, I have, ever since the 2008 publication of Budge Wilson's Before Green Gables waffled between on the one hand desiring (and perhaps even desperately needing) to read this imagined prequel and on the other hand not being all that keen on even trying (as I could neither imagine Budge Wilson even remotely capturing the sweet and utter magic of L.M. Montgomery's text, her narrative nor considering if one reads between the lines of Anne of Green Gables that Anne's life before she was adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert was pretty sad and painful, did I really want to read a disillusioning sob-fest of a novel that wallowed and revelled in misery after misery).

And after now having finally read Before Green Gables, I do have to admit that sadly almost ALL of my trepidations regarding it were (and remain) very much and disappointedly justified and true. For one, Budge Wilson (in her striving to make Anne Shirley appear as extraordinary and special) has in my opinion rendered her into something of a freak (into a prematurely adult-like child and so precocious and often removed from reality that she, that Budge Wilson's Anne at least to and for me no longer even feels and appears as all that much like a kindred spirit anymore). And for two that Before Green Gables is (and just as I had feared and dreaded) so chock full of one tragedy after another (death, destruction, alcoholism, domestic violence, neglect, you name it), that even though L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and its sequels indeed are both dark and light, both pleasant and sad and as such are meant to be read and enjoyed by both children and adults, in my opinion, with Budge Wilson's Before Green Gables, the majority of the featured thematics and content are really so very much saddening, at times even bordering on the viciously horrifying and actually decidedly and according to my tastes pretty much entirely adult or at least young adult oriented in content and scope (therefore of course not all that child friendly anymore either, and often even, in my opinion, rather massively off-putting and infuriating so to speak, leaving a sickening pit in one's stomach and not much that is in any way joyful).