Anne

There are those works that leave you hopeless. Once you finish rifling through its pages you're heartbroken and the rest of your day is ruined for the loss of those beautiful words. The characters, plot, writing have touched you in a way that makes it futile to even try for happiness. Your life seems simple and trivial in comparison and you wish for the world of the book back.

Welcome to my current state of being.

I have just put down "Anne of the Island", the third installment of the 'Anne of Green Gables' series. The past two books were enjoyable and I grew to love Anne, the charismatic, imaginative, charming girl of Canada. But it was the third book that blew me away. Anne goes to college to get her BA and she's truly grown up now. Her struggles, triumphs, dashed hopes, and confused romances echoed my own experiences. I connected with Anne in this book as I hadn't in the others. Her encounters with romance and her tarnished girlhood images of what romance should be resonated with me. After four years at college, her sense of loss at having to leave the place that was her home and the girls who became her best friends was almost an exact match to the despondent feelings I felt at leaving my own Alma Mater.

In Anne I find a hero, an ideal, a girl to whom I should aspire. She is good, loving, and kind yet she has faults. I want to be as decided and clear in my morals and attitudes as she is on the page. Anne has become royalty in my world of literary characters. She is a new favorite, the likes of which is rare to find in literature and the world.