Marilla is the one who changes, and nobody says so

It's Marilla I come back to, which I suspect happens to everybody the wrong side of sixty. Anne is a marvellous engine and she wears you out; Marilla is the one being altered, in tiny increments, mostly off the page, and Montgomery is far cleverer about her than she gets credit for.

This new edition is handsome and I resent the price. The illustrations are lovely. The introduction spends four pages telling you the book is about belonging, which any nine-year-old works out by the third chapter without assistance.

Dated in places, and I won't pretend otherwise. The comic business with the French farmhand has aged very poorly. The sheer volume of description too; I timed a reading-aloud once and gave up on it.

Where it still works is the shame. Anne's dreadfulness about her hair, the slate over Gilbert's head, the raspberry cordial. Humiliation at that age is total, and Montgomery never once treats it as small. Girls who will tolerate nothing old will tolerate this, in my experience, provided you can get them past chapter one, which is all weather and Mrs Rachel Lynde.

Suits a confident reader in Year 5 or a nervous one in Year 7.