Becky's Book Reviews: 79. Anne of Manhattan

Tuesday, August 03, 2021

79. Anne of Manhattan

Anne of Manhattan. Brina Starler. 2021. 327 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: If there was one thing Anne Shirley would stand firm against all arguments, it was that a person could never have too many books.

Premise/plot: Anne of Manhattan is a modern-day retelling of Anne of the Island with a handful of flashbacks to scenes from Anne of Green Gables. Anne is in her final year of graduate school, living with her roomates, Philippa and Diana, and partying at bars on the weekend. Gilbert Blythe, a man she despises, but also once almost almost hooked up with, has surprised her by transferring to her school--Redmond College. The two are paired together for their final project thesis by a professor. Forced to work together, they soon find themselves entangled--literally. But will their relationship withstand the stresses of grad school?

My thoughts: Super short and sweet version: JUST DON'T.

Long and rambling rant: I knew when I put this one on hold it would either be very good OR excruciatingly painful--a book so bad that I would want to UNREAD it, By the way, GoodReads should totally have a shelf called "want to UNread." So which was it? DEFINITELY excruciatingly bad.

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe really only a share a name with their originals. This is only a slight exaggeration. The two have a long, long, long history of being competitive academically--true enough. And he did call her "Carrots" the day they met. But everything else is night and day different.

The book is 100% reliant on readers doing ALL the work imagining these characters to be, you know, characters that are in any way fleshed out, with depth and substance, human. The author just doesn't put in any work at all except giving them names, putting a drink in their hands, and giving them places to sleep at night.

L.M. Montgomery can't be beat when it comes to characters. It doesn't matter if a character has two pages to develop or a couple of hundred. Montgomery is a creator breathing life and fleshing her characters out. I feel that Montgomery was very intentional with her characters. They were in a scene, in a book, there for a purpose. Building relationships is something she excelled at. The relationship between Anne and Marilla was different than the relationship between Anne and Matthew. And oh-so-different than her relationship with Mrs. Rachel Lynde!

It isn't just that this "retelling" isn't three-dimensional and as good as the original. It is that it is lacking in ALL dimensions. Call the characters any other name and it would still be a poorly written book.

There is no purpose for Diana Barry and Philippa Gordon to exist in this retelling. Yes, they are her roommates. Yes, they go with her to the bars to drink. But Anne doesn't seem to have a special, close bond with either of them. They don't chatter. They don't confide. They are not essential in Anne realizing anything about herself or the wider world. They might as well be robots. They very well could be replaced with robots and Anne wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I can understand that it would be hard for the writer to imagine Diana Barry attending college and living an adult life--but I don't know that she even tried. And why bring Philippa into it at all??? I don't believe she made it into the movie--that I can recall. But she was such a PRESENCE in the books!!! She was such a fun, lively character in the book. To just drop her name and then do absolutely nothing with her at all except make her smile and drink is a CRIME.

I almost wish Anne didn't go back to Avonlea to visit. On the one hand, Matthew is alive. On the other hand, Matthew is lifeless. Definitely the author fails to convey HOW SUPER-SUPER-SUPER close Anne and Matthew are. The author doesn't really make Anne's relationship with Marilla be that meaningful either. Matthew has no reason for being there in this retelling. Marilla's sole purpose in being in this retelling is so that RACHEL AND MARILLA CAN COME OUT AS LESBIANS. Anne, of course, always had an inkling that these two were hiding something.

Going back to Diana for half a minute, Diana's sole "character trait" is that she is bisexual. Again, there's no real character development at all...

The book is smutty. For some that may be HOORAY, HOORAY at last I can read about them having sex. I think the difference between good romance and bad romance is if the sexy/steamy parts are the sole reason for a book to exist. How much work went into the book apart from writing the smutty scenes? How much work was just focused on leading up to the smutty scenes? Does the book fall apart after the smutty scenes because everything else is essentially pointless? Here we have a book that hardly has a reason to exist except that the author wanted Anne and Gilbert in a modern hook-up culture so she could play around with them. I do admit a bias--I prefer my smut content to be in the 0 to 3% range.

Anne meets with the professor a handful of times--sometimes with Gilbert, mainly without. For some reason--perhaps the author confusing character development with plot twists?--the professor is a villain. Once Anne exposes him as a villain, of course, her final year is in question? I couldn't quite understand (because I didn't want to take the time to unpack the situation fully) if he wasn't going to allow her to graduate? or if he just wasn't going to hire her? or a combination of the two?

But the "big, bad" conflict between Gilbert and Anne is that he is offered the job she applied for? And she LOSES it big time when she hears about it?