Brooke Hamilton

I finished reading L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valley at 1:00am this morning. 40% of the book reads like gossip, while the rest is divided between description and humour. This wasn’t one of my favourite Anne books, but I still enjoyed it. It made me laugh at parts. The plot is that Anne’s children and the pastor’s children are constantly getting up to no good, with the best of intentions. It reminded me of what it was like to be a kid and let me tell you, I was a little devil compared to the kids in this book. I was mean and angry and rough with our pets. I was angelic at bedtime when it was time for story and the day was behind me – but for the day leading up to that I was trapping the cats under laundry baskets, pulling the string in my sister and her friend’s bathing suit tops in the pool, throwing goldfish at the new kid in school, and just in general being a little shit. In the book, whenever the children cause someone harm they punish themselves but I didn’t care about being bad, I always somehow convinced myself that I was in the right. Now I agonize over every misstep, yet I still manage to make them. Will I ever be perfect, already?