Dear TBR,
When nine-year-old me first stumbled on a 1930’s edition of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES in a pile of discarded books, I was mainly interested in its thickness, and the fact that it would mean several hours during which I could escape the airless and stifling eternity that was summer vacation. The book itself was mysterious – cloth-bound and hardbacked, covered only in a woven white and green baize and lacking a dust cover, so the title only appeared faintly on the spine. Who was Anne? Where was Green Gables? Later I would be intrigued by the internal landscape of a very weird girl, and her wide vocabulary of unknown words which I nonetheless employed with confident inaccuracy – turning heads with my increasingly foreign pronunciations and effusive expressions, becoming more and more the “white girl” I was often told I spoke like. I can’t really blame Anne for my complete weirdness as a child – but I can say that I welcomed the knowledge that someone else was an entirely square peg in a round hole like me. As a white, Canadian, Victorian possessed of prejudices and a touchy pride that I didn’t have, we weren’t twins, but we were definitely kindred spirits. I read that book over and over and over that summer and for many years, annually – because Anne’s emotional interior, if not her skin tone, time period, or even her concerns – was all me.
Anne Shirley, though first of her name, was not alone. There have been multiplicities of Annes, from the Japanese spin-offs of the 70’s to the more recent adult adaptations – Anne in Philly or whatnot. They’ve all been female, though… until Rey Terciero most recent graphic novel. DAN IN GREEN GABLES. Did the world need another Anne? Not necessarily – but though the emotions of the book are true enough to have made a space for many, they didn’t make a space for everyone… perhaps the author felt there needed to be a specific place for LGBTQ readers. In Terciero’s version, Dan isn’t orphaned – at least in his own mind. His Matthew and Marilla are, instead of geriatric siblings, grandparents – his. And rather than having only one kindred spirit, Dan’s world extends and expands to include two – in different ways – and numerous lighter bonds of relationships which nevertheless create the web which suspends him above the lava of his own emotions at times. Since Anne’s story is familiar I won’t go into the details, nor is this meant to be a beat-for-beat comparison between the original and Terciero’s newer work. The details differ, but the heart is the same.
When Dan’s mother takes him, after years of it largely being the two of them against the world, to a little house in the Great Smoky Mountains, he doesn’t know where they’re going – or why. He only knows his mother is in a ‘mood.’ It’s a shock when they roll up to the home of his paternal grandparents. Conservative farm folk, they live quietly and mostly contentedly within their church community, so a couple of itinerant city-dwellers who sometimes sleep in the back of their truck is quite a disruption. A further disruption occurs when Dan’s mother immediately argues bitterly and vociferously with his grandfather – and then slips out in the middle of the night, leaving her teen-aged son behind with essential strangers. Though he’d met his grandparents as a small child, Dan doesn’t remember them – at all. His mother has never talked about them, or even his father very much. He knows nothing – and as an expressive gay teen is as welcome as an ulcer to his tightly wound, judgmental and homophobic grandfather. While his Mawmaw is ready with armloads of unconditional love, it’s apparent that even she can be made uncomfortable by Dan’s flamboyant appearance and wounded by his touchy temper which occasionally lashes viciously from the depths of his fear and grief at being abandoned. Dan’s wounds, questions, doubts, and determination are very Anne, and would have resonated with nine-year-old me, even though neither our skin color, nationality, gender, nor concerns are the same.
Dan, overall, is Anne – crushed by disappointment and mockery, hiding deeper heartbreak, salty and snarky, flying off the handle and jumping to conclusions, elated and ebullient, hopeful and hilarious – all that made Anne-with-an-e relatable makes Dan the same. As in the original book, religion is a cornerstone element of Dan’s story, as his grandparents are church cornerstones, and his deacon grandfather is deeply concerned with how they appear as a family to their church community. Some readers may be uncomfortable at the characterization of some Christians – accurate, though rather damning – but others will feel relieved to find the words for what they may have thought, questioned, hoped for, or affirmed in the depiction of others in faith.
Resilient, inclusive, quick to anger, quick to forgive, willing to examine his own behavior and to see the world through another’s point of view, Dan has all of the genuine, personable human elements that gave Anne such well-loved main character energy. Definitely imperfect and thin-skinned – he is learning to be a person in this book, as well as learning to be someone cared for, instead of a caretaker – Dan’s road is full of missteps. He is just as exasperating as Anne was when she first came to Avonlea – and like Anne, Dan grows and changes. To my mind, he becomes even stronger in this single volume than Anne learned to become in two. People who fear that this version of Anne of Green Gables is merely a faded imprint of a saccharine-sweet character who goes on to Do Good will be relieved. People who love beautifully drawn graphic novels will be delighted – in these images Dan is colorful, expressive, and beautiful, and Avonlea is the perfect time capsule of a Appalachian farm town. I came to this book surprised by how well I liked it, and wistful that it was a graphic novel that doesn’t go on forever. This gave me the experience of coming to Anne of Green Gables for the first time, all over again.
I’ve carried my nine year old self and my first encounter with Anne Shirley with me for the whole of my life – I imagine that Dan in Green Gables will become a strong and portable fragment of someone’s heart – and hope – for a lifetime as well.
Fresh onto the TBR:
- Darksight Dare, Lois McMasters Bujold
- The Saltwater Curse, Avina St. Graves
- Behind Frenemy Lines, Zen Cho
Until the next book, 📖
Still A Constant Reader
