6/2010 Standing by my five-star rating. Tish's voice rings true in the overwrought way I remember from my own adolescence. I love the first chapter better than maybe any other first chapter in a series. It never fails to make me cry. I think the Sterling family is real and endearing. I love the fact that Tish is a little older than Betsy Ray (from the Betsy-Tacy series) and their experiences are so dissimilar while sharing a great deal. Hodel Resnikov is someone I think I remember from high school. I love this book, I do.

I'm ready to jump into the fray and say that I fail to see any stealing from Maud Hart Lovelace in this book, unless one counts the name of Gramps' horse and the moment when Tish and Celinda share a tempestuous hug.




5/2008 I had to re-read this after reading Random Family which takes place in the exact same neighborhood 100 years later. It was so disconcerting to have the modern Bronx overlaid on top of Tish's West Farms. I do adore this book, though having my own sensitive, misunderstood 14-year-old added to the vertigo this time through. ( )

I found The Keeping Days through LibraryThing. Someone recommended it for fans of the Anne of Green Gables series, and that's usually enough to send me off in search of whatever is being recommended. I wasn't disappointed. Although Norma Johnston's story and characters are much more brazen than L. M. Montgomery's, the snapshots of small-town life and all the myriad characters that inhabit it are similar. I hesitate to say that Johnston's characters are more realistic; whenever I'm tempted to do that, I reread Montgomery and am again surprised at her insight into human relationships. Say rather that Johnston's characters live and move and have their being in a much less idealized world.

The story is narrated by Tish Sterling, who is just turning fourteen. She and her family live in New York at the turn of the century. The members of the Sterling family are all strong individualists. There's Pa, who works as a court stenographer; Mama, who specializes in being an Early Christian Martyr and never seems to understand her children; Bron, the beauty of the family who can't decide between her beaus; Ben, who cuts school and experiments with smoking when he can get away with it; Peter, who retreats to a world of his own to study insects; Marnie, who wishes she had been born a boy; and Missy, the baby. And these are just the immediate family. Gramps and Aunt Kate are also quite distinct characters who come across as very believable.

Tish knows herself to be "sensitive." She keeps a diary of sorts in which she records "keeping days," the kind of days on which something emotionally momentous happens, something that changes the rest of life. She doesn't really know what makes a keeping day what it is, and learns as the story goes on that she can't contrive them. They either happen, or they don't. There isn't a lot of overarching plot in this story. Like the Anne books, it seems mostly composed of episodic chapters that reveal different aspects of life in that place and time. But there are some plotlines that run throughout the book, like the worry over Father's job, Mama's unexpected pregnancy, Bron's love affairs, and Tish's own slowly blooming relationship with Ken Latham. Their neighbors are very like those in Avonlea. There is the resident brat of the class, Mary Lou, who goes after all the boys in a very Josie Pye-ish way. There's Cecelia, Tish's meek friend, and the whole gang of background neighborhood characters whom we hear about only in the conversation of the main characters. It's clear that Johnston has read and loved Montgomery's stories.

But this is not a rip-off of the Anne books. Montgomery had a much more idealistic worldview, and at times flies off in ecstasies of poetry. I love those flights, but they can be somewhat stylized. Johnston indulges in no such things, and the feel of her book is a bit more gritty. There's profanity and some candid talk about physical attraction, which Montgomery would never have touched. Where Montgomery and Johnston are really alike is in their portrayal of a neighborbood and all the personalities that make it unique. A lot of the little vignettes in The Keeping Days could have been used by either author, though ultimately I prefer Montgomery's more humorous style.

In many ways, Tish's honest narration reminded me of Cassandra Mortmain in Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. It's an Anne setting, with Cassandra pointing out the local sights — always honest, a bit wry, and very perceptive about the people around her. I have to say I enjoyed The Keeping Days much more than I Capture the Castle, which started out so wonderfully but fizzled badly (in the plot, at least) as it went on. I especially appreciated the final emotional/spiritual crisis, because it's something I went through myself. I think a lot of young people can identify with it. Higher education can certainly shake what you believe, and I agree with Ben that it feels hellish. The resolution they reach is fascinating.

I wouldn't recommend this as universally as I do the Anne books, mostly because of the language and some of the content (which is actually rather tame by modern standards). Mature teens and older readers will enjoy this blunt, winning little story, and I'm eagerly looking out for the next in the series. ( )