Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32620 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
Valancy Stirling, an inhibited twenty-nine-year-old spinster, undergoes a total personality change when a doctor tells her she has no more than one year to live.

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Book!
This is a beautiful book, no other name suits it. It's my favourite Montgomery book.

Valancy Stirling wakes up on the morning of her 29th birthday hating her life. She is unmarried, lives with her miserable mother and cousin, cannot make one single own decision and is trapped within an old-fashioned family clan, led by pompous uncles. She is not allowed to say what she thinks, read books she wants to read or even sneeze. She escapes this grim existence by fantasising about her Blue Castle. Until she learns that she is ill and has only a year to live.

Valancy, realising that she has never had any real life, decides to go and look for her Blue Castle instead of just dreaming about it. She feels the strange kind of freedom that makes her speak her mind, befriend a lovable local drunk, leave home to go nursing his sick daughter (who was abandoned by everybody when she had an illegitimate baby) and later propose to the man she loves.

Valancy throws away her fear and for me, this is what gives the book a hidden message - what are we actually afraid of and isn't our fear just illogical?

The books is full little cute stories and decriptions and I like the relationship between Valancy and Barney, even though he didn't marry her for love - there's a lot of mutual respect and no romantic nonsense.

The scene that brought tears to my eyes was when Barney took Valacy to his island when they married and she, on seeing his little house, exclaimed: "My Blue Castle, oh, my Blue Castle!"... Truly a beautiful book!

Stick with it... it does get good!
I think this is L.M. Montgomery's only novel for adults; strange that it has ended up published in the "Children's Continuous Series"! Not that it is "adult" in today's language - it's all good clean fun - but don't be put off by the idea of it being a children's book (to be honest, I really think the older you are the more you can appreciate L.M. Montgomery). Blue Castle is a charming story of the kind you don't get very often nowadays, and I really enjoyed it.

The reason I give it four stars instead of five is because it starts off too slowly. The first few chapters are irritatingly repetitive; it is drummed into the reader that Valancy's family are oppressive, 'clannish' tyrants (and the characterisation of the Stirling family definitely verges on not-too-funny caricature; your standard L.M. Montgomery puritanical matriarchal old villains, x 10). It stretches the reader's suspension of disbelief.

However! It does really pick up once Valancy hears her prognosis, and gathers steam as she sets about living life as far out on the edge as one can in these books - actually, her boldness was pretty surprising in the context of the times and the genre. The love story was really sweet and genuinely touching, and as always the sense of place was gorgeous. The story goes through some twists and upsets before wrapping up nicely. Actually, by the end of the book, I kind of had the feeling that the plodding restraint of the first few chapters had served a purpose by getting the reader to feel like the repressed Valancy, at almost 30 years of age stuck in the same old house with the same miserable old women telling her the same thing every day, and be screaming for a bit of action and romance!

If you like L.M. Mongomery, you'll probably like this - it's a distinctly different type of book to the Anne and Emily series, but a lot of the themes are the same and there is that same eye for beauty and nature that feeds all her books. More so that the other books, there is an exposure of, an sympathy towards, the people living at the edge of the rather rigid society of the time and place. Some of the most sympathetic characters in Blue Castle are an unrepentant drunk and the young mother of an illegitimate son, and we also see a dance on the wrong side of town. Unlike the other books, which are set in a child's world or a loving family context, Blue Castle lets us experience its setting through the eyes of a grown-up single woman. And the love story is just a little more exciting than that of Anne and Gilbert, bless them!

Everyone has a Blue Castle.....
I decided to read this book as I heard it was similar to 'The Ladies of Missalonghi' by Colleen McCullough, which I really enjoyed. I found 'The Blue Castle' to be a captivating read. I couldn't wait to find out what happened. I was amazed that 'The Blue Castle' was written over 80 years ago, as I could relate to the character Valancy as if she were a modern woman. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is a romantic at heart. I'm sure everyone has their own 'Blue Castle' (i.e. dream). What L. M. Montgomery seems to be saying to us through this great novel, is that personal dreams and aspirations are very important and can get you through the hardest of times.