I can't remember if there was a single topic for this here.  I know there is at the back-up and was at the dinky forum.  If there is a topic, please point it out to me, and I'll delete this.

Anyway,  I got the book yesterday. Yay!
I'm very glad that the book is hardback with a dust jacket and isn't a pictorial hardback.  I prefer hb djs.    There is a small tear on the dj though. ~sniff~  I like my books to look as though they've never been read or at least hardly read.

I've read ninety-one pages so far.  I'm enjoying it more than I thought that I would.  After reading the excerpts my expectations of the book dropped a bit.  They must have chosen two chapters that had a lot of sentences starting with 'and'. :b ~laughs~

Have you gotten the book yet, Val?



SPOILERS BELOW

I actually kind of like Mr. Thomas. Maybe it's supposed to be written that way though.  I think that when Eliza asks him if she can marry Roger is when we see Mr. Thomas as he would've been had he not been an achoholic.  (I miss my spell check.) 
I think it's written a lot more simply than AoGG, but I think that the majority of books written today are written a lot more simply... which really is a shame. 

I just finished it.

After I digest my thoughts, and my dinner, I'll be back with some more comments.

I'd love to hear some thoughts from kindreds who have read this. I don't own it yet. I keep hoping the library will get it.

Oops, I forgot to come back and post the other night.

The book is good, but overall unnecessary. While I don't consider it part of LMM's Anne series, I enjoyed reading it.  Wilson's style of writing is very different from L.M. Montgomery's.  Before Green Gables is entirely lacking in humor, which is my favorite thing about LMM's style.  Of course, this may be because Anne's life before she reaches the Cuthberts is bleak, harsh and humorless.

The story starts with Bertha and Walter's life in their little, yellow house.  Though poor and solitary, Wilson shows that their home is full of love, and set apart from the lives of other young couples.  Ironically, Walter is a geometry teacher, and Bertha teaches English.  While Anne takes after her Mom in for her scholarly endeavors, she has her Dad's red hair.  The happiness in the little, yellow house is cut short, and Anne is taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, who hope for the Shirley's nice furniture and Bertha's clothing as part of the bargain. 

Mrs. Thomas's life is in turmoil because of her husband's alcoholism, and her one glimpse of the happiness in marriage is during her time helping the Shirleys during Bertha's pregnancy.  Anne makes a lot of observations of Mr. Thomas's double drunk/sober personality, and has brief glimpses of Mrs. Thomas's kindness, but her life is more or less pathetic.  Her happy moments are brief, including her short months at school, visits with the Word Man (who teaches her new words), daydreaming, and her reflection friend Katie in the glass cabinet, which we learn came from the Shirley home.  When Mr. Thomas dies, Anne's life is much the same at the Hammonds.  Though there is no anger, Anne observes the family worries over too many children and not enough time or money.  Mrs. Hammond is always pregnant, and Anne's life is full with twins and loads of diapers, cooking dinners and dishes.  Her new friend is her echo Violetta and she likes her teacher who shows her photos of P.E.I.  After Mr. Hammond dies, Anne's stay at the orphanage is brief, and though I thought it was better than her other homes, Anne didn't feel like she fit in there either with no room to dream.

In reading through all the sadness, you feel really glad Marilla and Matthew took Anne in.  The story is an expanded version of Chapter 5 of Anne of Green Gables when Anne tells Marilla her history.  In the end, I learned more new things about the Thomas and Hammond families than you will about Anne, and have sympathy for all of them.

I finished reading BGG last night.  I noticed one error with the time.  Mr. Thomas gives Anne a teddy bear, but teddy bear's weren't called "teddy" until 1903.  :b
I thought that maybe Anne's naming two cats Gilbert and Sullivan might be an error, but it looks as though they teamed up around 1870, so then it wouldn't be a mistake.
I had a question about another.  We learn that the picture Anne takes is in color because Anne tells us the color of the house.  Now, Mr. McDougall had a lot of PEI pictures... it doesn't elaborate whether or not they're photos or pictures.  If they were pictures, they could be in color, but if they were photos, they couldn't be in color.

I liked the book and would read it again.  I don't know if I could really label the book as enjoyable...  There were parts that I really liked, and parts I thought a bit dull or draggy.

Anne really didn't make me think of Anne; she made me think of Emily with her talking in italics quite a bit.

I thought that Anne's life with the Thomas's went on  a bit too long and that her life with the Hammond's was very brief and abrupt.  I realize that Anne was with the Thomases a lot longer, but it still seemed a bit long.

I also thought that Anne was a bit too smart when she was younger... too much of a prodigy. :b

I did end up liking the book more than I thought I would.  I think that the first two-thirds of the book was the best, but that the last one-third was a bit of a let down.

I left out all the mistakes in my last post.  I'll post them now, since you're posting them too Av. I have free reign to be negative now.  haha

I'm pretty sure they do say Mr. McDougall has photos, and they are definitely in color, which doesn't make sense.  This bothered me a lot! 

Related to the photos, I thought Anne had her strongest attachment to forests, trees and plants, not to the sea as Wilson suggests.  This bothered me.

Did they really call the bear a teddy?  I missed that one!

I also noticed an arithmetic error when Anne envies Tessa.  Tessa is 8 and Anne is nearly 11. Tessa's parents died 3 months ago. Wilson writes that this is about "seven years and nine months longer than Anne had even one parent."  Doing the math, Anne hasn't had any parents for about 10 years and 9 months.  The whole paragraph is strange.  I can't imagine a child thinking in the manner it's written.

I agree that Anne was unbelievable as a child of 5.  She sounds like she's 8-11.

The discussion of pregnancy (also the psychological analysis Mr. Thomas) was very modern, not Victorian at all.  Things like that really didn't keep me in Anne's time.

I know what you mean about the length at the Thomas's.  It is supposed to be 8 years, so I guess that's why it's so long.  The problem is, Anne's 3 months old to 8 years old, and Anne is older at the Hammonds and should have made better observations and had better ideas.  We don't learn much about her life at the Hammond's in comparison. 

I honestly didn't think the orphanage was as bad as the other homes. It certainly wasn't worse than the other two, as Anne implies in Anne of Green Gables.

Another thing I found inappropriate was the number of compliments Anne received for her beautiful hair!  Mrs. Archibald giving her ribbons multiple times for her "beautiful hair" really doesn't establish Anne's dismay at her hair color by the time she reaches Green Gables.  I thought this was one of the worst errors in the book.

Sure, use me as an excuse to feel negative! :-\  ;D

Did they really call the bear a teddy?  I missed that one!
I think it only happened once.  I was just flipping through to find it, but didn't see it.  I know it wasn't called a teddy the first time it was mentioned, so perhaps the mistake was caught earlier,  but not in all of the places?

I also noticed an arithmetic error when Anne envies Tessa.  Tessa is 8 and Anne is nearly 11. Tessa's parents died 3 months ago. Wilson writes that this is about "seven years and nine months longer than Anne had even one parent."  Doing the math, Anne hasn't had any parents for about 10 years and 9 months.  The whole paragraph is strange.  I can't imagine a child thinking in the manner it's written.
I think that she's talking about Tessa there.  Tessa had her parents for seven years and nine months... though  I guess taking it that way, it should be seven years and six months longer... I think.  Okay, I just read the entire paragraph.  That is confusing!  What's with the one parent??    I thought that Anne had a vague memory of her mother, or am I getting that mixed up with Maud?

I thought that the pregnancy discussion was a bit odd...

  haha, I was just kidding about being negative.  My criticisms are over real problems I saw in the book.  There are other things I liked too.

I couldn't find "teddy" either, but I didn't re-read everything, just the section where Mr. Thomas bought it.  I'm sure you're right though.

The Tessa thing is an error any way you look at it!  It's awful.  I found the one parent thing strange too.  I think it's just Anne's way of exaggerating...but it doesn't make sense.  The paragraph is just a mess.  I don't think a child, or most people think like that.  It would make more sense to say something like "Anne was envious that Tessa could at least remember her parents" instead of rambling and making chronological and math errors.

Hahaa, I think  I'm  glad you guys got Wilson there fore those mistakes... I'm glad the book isn't perfect. That puts it more apart form the real books.

But I will read it some day, just out of couisousity.

Thanx for teh reviews!

not having read the book at all...

1) re: photos
I think you could hand-colour black and white photos.  Not sure when the hand-colouring technology started... will have to look it up.  I doubt it's something you'd do for a house photo, more likely for a portrait.

BUT LMM's own photo on the cover of vol. 1 of the LMM journals IS in colour, and it's circa late 19th century?  will have to check date.

2) The Tessa thing sounds confusing and Anne isn't very mathematically inclined, so while there are kids who would think that way, I doubt Anne would.  But LMM made arithmetic errors a-plenty ... i mean, she had Shirley and Rilla turn 18 in the same year when Shirley was supposedly 2 years older, and she's skipped a whole year in both Anne of Ingleside and Pat of Silver Bush.

The photos are all of P.E.I. and they aren't portraits.  I think it's just an error Bets.  Anne didn't say something like, "From the tinting, she could imagine the colors of the Island."  I doubt a teacher in a poor school could afford to tint all his snapshots.

Bets, I never noticed LMM's arithmetic errors.  Those sounds pretty bad too.  Wilson's were all in a sentence, which makes them noticeable.  How did none of the editors catch it?  If a child was mathematically inclined, then they wouldn't make an error.  If they were not inclined to math, like Anne, they wouldn't think that way at all.  No matter how I look at it, it's a mistake.

Thanks for posting your thoughts, AvFan and Valancy.  I want to read it now, so I can follow the discussion.  It might be awhile before I can find it in the library. 

Thanks for all the reviews and  fine points ( aka spoilers). .  i will lokk forwrd to my library getting this or findaing a really good s*ale* on overstock.com or something

I just finished reading Before Green Gables yesterday and I really enjoyed reading the book.  I was very impressed with Budge Wilson's research into Anne's past. She did a great job with the book and I was very impressed; I would definitly read it again. I think that even LMM herself would of liked this book, it may not have been what she would have written herself but I think that she would of been at least flatered.

felicity18

I'm almost done! ;D :'(

I like Mr. Thomas too. I love how the book opens up with Anne's parents. If anyone got to this part of the book. Anne named the two cats that aren't named yet. (No wonder why she likes Gilbert!) She named one of the cats Gilbert, and the other Sullivan!

Thanks everyone for the reviews. I have a copy on it's way to me, so I'll be reading it soon and will comment more then.

edited...sorry for the double post... I got an error message saying "unable to send message to: annegirlm@notarealemailaddress.dumberror " when trying to post... I think the internet is trying to drive me crazy tonight, because the site I was just on was having errors too.

Everyone's been getting errors Rilla, both when responding to posts and PMs.  Even if you get the error, the posts/messages go through.  There's a topic in the complaints section about it.

Thanks for letting me know... I haven't been around much for a few days, so this was the first time it had happened. I'm just beginning to catch up on reading stuff tonight.

Okay, Becky, when you told me you ordered BGG, did you mean Beyond or Before?  If Beyond, then you have an awesome library system.

I ordered Beyond a couple months ago from a bookstore... and then ordered Before Green Gables a few days ago from a bookstore. Our libraries are much too dumb to get many new LMM books. (they don't even have all of LMM's novels, and there are at least a dozen local libraries) The last really good LMM book they ordered for the library was the LMM Album and I was shocked when they got it. (but very happy )

lol  I'm so dumb!  I forgot that you had already gotten Beyond GG. :b

You're not dumb... I think my forgetfullness is just wearing off on you. I'm a bad influence.

I just finished reading Before Green Gables, this morning. I really enjoyed reading though I thought it got a bit boring at times. I thought that the way she got Anne to speak in the long never ending sentences was pure Anne. Can't remember whether it was something Val or Av wrote, but I agree that you didn't really get the impression Anne was as clumsy as she was in AoGG. I thought Anne was doing a lot of work before she was 5 that a child that young would not be able to do, but maybe a child could in those days. I never actually thought Anne had the quiet simmering temper she seemed to have in the orphan asylum. From reading AoGG I had the impression she had an explosive anger which couldn't be contained if she was made angry by someone. I thought she softened Hammonds, I always had the impression that they were verbally abusive towards her as well as treating her like a built in slave.

I have to admit that I liked Mr Thomas and the Egg Man. It was interesting reading about what life with the Thomas family may have been like for Anne as I don't think LMM goes into much detail about that, but I'm not entirely sure.

No, she goesinto more detail about the Hammonds. Not that much, but moe than the Thomas's.

Disclaimer: I'm prejudiced against the premise of this story. I don't think an "official prequel" should have been sanctioned and I tremble lest people will henceforth consider it part of the LMM canon.

But I read Wilson's book as judiciously as I could. I believe she writes well - her sentences are well formed. I write rather like her - precise, piercing. I agree that it's not necessary to imitate Montgomery. And yet her writing reads rather dry. I should never want to write like that.

Wilson's caste of characters add dramatic interest, but I find them very two-dimensional. Do good, well-meaning, semi-genteel parents ever sum up their only daughter as Mrs. Thomas's did? "With her looks, she won't last, let's marry her off." Mr. Thomas, Eliza, Jessie, The Egg Man are all archetypes - they each have their own plotline but there's little insight into how they change and grow, and little divine justice for their actions.

Montgomery writing is replete with mathematical errors, but I have a harder time condoning Wilson's logical inconsistencies. Why didn't Mrs. Thomas give Anne to Jessie when her husband died? Why didn't the Egg Man and Miss Henderson adopt her? Why does Anne hate her hair if Mrs. Archibald praised her for her beautiful red hair? If Anne was so loved by Eliza, why did she never talk about her to Marilla?

Overall, I had a hard time holding my interest in this book. It was too long and too consistently doleful. I cannot imagine myself reading it if it weren't for the Anne connection. I especially wouldn't have enjoyed it as a young adult.

I've read close to 100 pages now, and I hope it gets more interesting. It's taken me over a month to read this much. I have read some other books along with this one, and keep finding myself preferring to read something else.

The first few chapters I liked, and those went quickly. I liked reading a little about Bertha and Walter.

So far I don't like anyone in the Thomas family very much.

As others have mentioned, Anne seems too old for her age. I've never known a 3-5 year old who would talk like she did.

I don't like the discussion of pregnancy... Much too modern for Anne's time period.

So far to me it's just kind of dull. Please tell me it improves.

While I don't consider it part of LMM's Anne series, I enjoyed reading it.  Wilson's style of writing is very different from L.M. Montgomery's.  Before Green Gables is entirely lacking in humor, which is my favorite thing about LMM's style.
Hmmm...I think this may be one of it's biggest problems and why I'm not enjoying it as much either...

Anne doesn't seem like an LMM-y character in this book...at least not at this point.

~tries to think positively~ The book may get more interesting...

It was good. But it must be hard to sell a book, that LLM didn't have anything to do with it. And try to look like she's the author. Not a easy task!

Rilla, it doesn't.  I could tell you it does, but that would be a lie.  Well, the Hammonds and orphange sections are rushed and go by more quickly at least.

Well, that's good to hear that it might go a little more quickly at least.

I found the part where she mentions the teddy bear. I read a few pages last night, and on page 101, (chapter 25) it says, "Horace even rushed forward at one point to snatch a one-armed teddy bear from the arms of a startled woman." I looked ahead to where Anne gets a bear and it seems that it's just called a bear there...but I just skimmed over it... It's strange though how things like that aren't noticed by proofreaders/editors.

Yay! Someone found that! ;D 

Rilla: I've never known a 3-5 year old who would talk like she did.
You should meet Josiah (nephew).  He's been talking in sentences since he was born. :b But that's really the only 3-5 year old that I know that talks that much, and he doesn't come across as smart as Anne does in BGG.

Another thing I've been contemplating is how much work Anne does and how abnormal it seems.  She's four years old and doing all this work...  it seems very alien.  I know that kids helped around the house way more when they were younger, but four?  The same thing though goes for the LHotP prequels.  I think each book begins with the kids being five, and they're learning how to stitch and have several chores.  I try to picture my five year old niece and nephews doing the stuff mentioned, but I just can't!

You should meet Josiah (nephew).  He's been talking in sentences since he was born. :b But that's really the only 3-5 year old that I know that talks that much, and he doesn't come across as smart as Anne does in BGG.
Yeah... some can talk and talk and talk... but not many end up sound so much older, like Anne did.

Another thing I've been contemplating is how much work Anne does and how abnormal it seems.  She's four years old and doing all this work...  it seems very alien.
I just read something about her helping change diapers, and it mentioned that she had safety pins in her mouth. I don't know many people who would let a 5/6 year old use safety pins...much less put them in their mouth! My niece used to help out a lot when her brother was born...she was 5...but she did small things...nothing compared to what Anne is doing.

I think I've read two pages since I last posted. :p

My nephew who is almost 4 is like Anne.  Mister Know It All.  He can go out into the garden and tell you the names of all the flowers and a lot more other stuff that a 3 year old shouldn't really care about.  LOL!

Speeding right along then?

~grin~ I'm just flying through now. I've read at least 50 pages since my last post.

I was wondering about two things...

Didn't some of the heirs mention how the book made them cry because it was so sad or touching or something? I tried to find the article but couldn't. So, I was wondering if the book made anyone here cry?

Also was curious if any of you that have read the book think it would make a good movie, since in an article it was mentioned that there's a possibility of it being a movie someday.

The movie is already been made. Some parts almost made me cry, but I didn't.

I meant the possibility of a movie based on Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, not the new movie from Sullivan Ent... AoGG: A New Beginning.

Hi All,

  I happened to be in Borders this afternoon, and while wandering around I came across the Prequel to Anne of Green Gables.  I have never heard of this book before, and it's not written by LMM.  In fact, the author is Budge Wilson, and I found the description on the jacket cover, along with the style of the stories quite interesting.  They almost sound like LMM herself.  I don't know if any of you have the book, but if you want to read it, you can find it at Borders here: http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=039915468X.  I really like how the story starts out with her real parents, and right now I am about to read the story of Anne's birth.  It seems like her parents really loved each other.  Every bit is just as interesting as the books which LMM wrote herself.

Afra, there was another topic on Before Green Gables on the board, so I merged your topic with the existing one.