Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart LovelaceMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the only Betsy-Tacy book I didn't give 5 stars to. This book was definitely different than the others. I bet lots of people were definitely dissapointed by this book, but it brings a lot of reality to the series. Main point: The realism in this book will lead to dissapointment by fans.
Reality: Since this series was written closely based on Maud's real life, a lot of realistic components of life's journey went into this series. Most authors would never create a story where the protagonist becomes the only character you can recognize steadily throughout the entire book, because it creates less depth in the story when the characters are always changing. Nevertheless, Maud stuck firmly to real life and her solo tour of Europe, and I must say that this proved hard for the reader. It was definitely confusing and not very fun to go from Betsy's familiar and exciting senior year with Joe Willard to only Betsy. All the others were gone, only mentioned in letters. There were some new characters, but whenever Betsy left that city she would leave them behind and there would be new ones. In a way, this was fun after a while. At first, this approach to the plot was not very interesting, but towards the middle of the book you warmed to this approach. The end strech I found deeply unsatisfying because of the fact that Betsy spent a lot of time in England when I was simply anxious for her to get home. At this time, she wasn't doing much and I was tired of hearing about yet another inn and its inhabitants. Suddenly, the book was not fun. I liked the last two pages when she wrote to Joe, that was definitely a big "FINALLY!" moment for a lot of readers.
Setting: The book skipped 3 years of Betsy's life, which I'm sure many were unhappy about. Completely skipping Betsy's college experience and beginning when Betsy was 21, jumping from when she was eighteen in the previous book. Apparently Maud had a very uninteresting and silly college experience, because she only mentioned it in a couple of pages at the beginning. However, this was a welcome touch of reality, showing that sometimes mistakes can be made in life and there are parts we'd rather erase. Although readers would have loved what every other series would have given them in a description of her college life after reuniting with Joe and the very promising and happy ending to the previous book, Maud stuck to what truly happened.
Joe: This kind of ties into setting. At the end of Betsy and Joe (Betsy-Tacy, #8), Joe and Betsy have reunited in a loving relationship after a long separation. Joe has declared that he is looking forward to a world with Betsy. And then we flash into the next book where suddenly Betsy is at the dock on a ship sailing away to Europe when she should be in college, with some remarks about not thinking about Joe, without any explanation. This was definitely confusing. When we finally find out that we missed the breakup of Joe and Betsy, and even that it happened at all, we are angry. Even more, we are deeply hurt and shocked that Betsy was such a silly duck all through college with that strange character we only hear about in mystical accounts, Bob Barhydt. Betsy is definitely an annoying and silly character at times because she often goes and makes these resolutions, then promptly forgets them and acts like a weirdo (not very creative but I can't think of anything else). She just acts all silly, and then she'll make another resolution. It becomes quite tiring, but again brings a touch of realism about people's real character to the story. I just think that fans were definitely dissapointed in Betsy's behavior in college, and to learn that suddenly she was going off to Europe away from everyone (especially Joe!) was a betrayal of sorts. This was realistic, although not what a truly fictional book would have brought to the table.
War: The introduction of the war to Betsy's world right after she left the countries that had declared war was definitely scary. It was actually really boring and strange right in the middle of the otherwise joyous and homebound plot to introduce England and its talk of war. This was, again realistic as this is what happened to Maud in real life. I also enjoyed hearing about the opinion that Americans had that the world was too civilized for war, so there would never be another. I had not known that this was the general opinion at the time, and it was inetersting to learn that.
Overall, a very charming book. I realize I have not mentioned much about the actual story, but there's not much to say. There were so may cities and place she visited that I can't possibly remember much of any of them. If you stick it through, it gets better and interesting to read. At the end, I was just very happy to finally move on to the very pleasant and familiar Betsy's Wedding (Betsy-Tacy, #10) and Tacy's pregnancy! This book was definitely very realistic, although not what the readers may have liked.
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