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Matilde Ribeiro Reviews 'Rilla of Ingleside'

    • Team NIE
    • Publish Date: Jul 4 2016 7:30AM
      • |
    • Updated Date: Aug 2 2016 2:59PM
Matilde Ribeiro Reviews 'Rilla of Ingleside'

 

Matilde Ribeiro, Class VIII, Baldwin Girls’ High School, Bangalore

Wars have always been an inspiration for writers, in a tradition going as far back as Homer’s Iliad. Name any twenty great novels of the twentieth century and you can be sure that a book like ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, by Ernest Hemingway, or ‘A Tree Grows In Brooklyn’, by Betty Smith, will be included. Both of these books involve war in some way during the course of the narrative, as do many other classic novels.


‘Rilla of Ingleside’ is a war novel, set in the First World War. It is the eighth book in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s popular ‘Anne’ series, which follows the spunky redheaded orphan as she grows up, falls in love, marries and becomes a mother. Bertha Marilla ‘Rilla’ Blythe is Anne’s daughter, who gradually overshadows her mother over the last three books. By this book, the series finale, Anne is reduced to a supporting character. 
As the book opens, Rilla is 14, Anne’s youngest child, with five older siblings: Jem, Walter, Nan, Di and Shirley. Archduke Franz Ferdinand has just been assassinated in Sarajevo, but that doesn’t disturb Rilla’s little world. The first time Rilla realizes the gravity of the news is when, at her first dance, a man comes in with the news that England has joined the war and that the men from Canada, their homeland, will have to fight.
Jem and his friend, Jerry Meredith, are among the first to enlist. The second boy, budding writer Walter, is afraid of the horrors of war. Only the sinking of the ‘Lusitania’ in the spring of 1915 shocks him into enlisting. The third boy, Shirley, joins the Air Force soon after he turns eighteen. Nan and Di act as Red Cross workers while completing their Bachelor’s Degree in Arts at Redmond College in Kingsport.
Alone at home, Rilla, still in her teens, is forced to grow up. She adopts a war orphan, runs a Junior Red Cross and organizes concerts to raise money for communities devastated by war, while waiting for the Big Push that will bring her brothers and friends home. During the four years of World War I, Rilla’s life is reduced to waiting – until the day when her brothers, (excluding Walter, who dies in the Battle of Courcelette) friends and her fiancé Kenneth Ford come back after winning the war.
‘Rilla of Ingleside’ is a good fictional introduction to the First World War. It explores in detail the fears, hopes, sorrows and dreams of the families shattered by the war, not sparing details like Jem’s personal battle with lice in the trenches, and Rilla’s war-baby’s determination to ruin her romance with Kenneth. As a family story and as a historical novel, ‘Rilla of Ingleside’ provides a heartwarming finale to an unforgettable series.

 

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