Rilla of Ingleside is the eighth and last in my set of Anne of Green Gables books by L. M. Montgomery. Rilla, Anne’s youngest child, is 15. All her brothers and sisters are in various levels of higher education, but Rilla has no educational ambitions: “There’s bound to be one dunce in every family. I’m quite willing to be a dunce if I can be a pretty, popular, delightful one” (p. 16).

A passing note in the newspaper about the murder of some “Archduke man” “in foreign parts” makes little impression on the Ingleside folks, unaware as they are that this is the beginning of the Great War, or as it later came to be called, World War I. But all too soon the call comes for service and Anne’s two oldest boys enlist – cheery Jem, ready to take on the world, and quiet, poetic Walter, lover of beauty, loathing ugliness and evil, yet compelled to do his duty.

Other friends and playmates from the Glen answer the call as well, ushering in four long years of waiting, checking the news every day, keeping track of everyone’s condition, war efforts at home from rationing to fund-raising. Spirits rise and fall with the daily news of battles won and lost and loved ones wounded, missing, or dead.

Rilla has to grow up fast, and though her mother laments that she has become a woman too soon, she rejoices in the help she is to her.

I’ve read many books set in WWII, but WWI wasn’t as familiar to me. This book was originally published in 1921 and the war ended in 1918, so it was still relatively fresh in the minds of its early readers. The facts were interesting, and the long weight of it on family members back home was realistic. There was a general spirit of everyone pulling together in both world wars that seems to have been absent in wars ever since. I’m still pondering that.

Of the eight books, this one ranks behind the first Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams in my list of favorites. There is both laughter and sorrow, idiosyncrasies and poignancy.

A couple of favorite quotes: the first night of hearing that England had declared war on Germany, “Rilla told herself pathetically that she felt years older than when she had left home that evening. Perhaps she did — perhaps she was. Who knows? It does not do to laugh at the pangs of youth” (p. 34).

And from Susan, Ingleside cook and housekeeper, on the “right” to pride in a certain matter: “Pride is cold company” (p. 208).

One of the things I enjoy about LMM’s books is the little ironic asides she inserts from time to time. I love that she doesn’t draw undue attention to them, leaving them for the reader to discover and chuckle over. In one in this book, Susan is talking about an old quarrel with a cousin: “We quarreled when we were children over who should get a Sunday School card with the words ‘God is love,’ wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and have never spoken to each other since” (p. 9). Though such a quarrel in real life would not be a laughing matter, the absurdity of a feud lasting for years over a sentiment about God’s love makes the reader smile and shake her head over such foolishness.

I loved this book, loved seeing Rilla grow and mature, though parts of the process were painful. And though it is kind of sad to be at the end of the Anne books, it is satisfying as well. I’ll look forward to reading some of LMM’s other books for next year’s LMM challenge.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)