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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don't know if I've read an author that makes me rage as much as Geraldine Brooks.
This book was like going on Fanfiction.net to look for Little Women fan fiction. Except, I've seen better written stories come out of fan fiction. This is title that would be dropped after the first chapter was published.
I have never read a more self-inserted sanctimonious racist of an author in my life. Geraldine Brooks will always get a no for me.
This book was like going on Fanfiction.net to look for Little Women fan fiction. Except, I've seen better written stories come out of fan fiction. This is title that would be dropped after the first chapter was published.
I have never read a more self-inserted sanctimonious racist of an author in my life. Geraldine Brooks will always get a no for me.
Really enjoyed Geraldine Brooks take on the fathers story from Little Women. The book begins with Peter March's early travels as a peddler from the North hawking his goods in the South. His experiences in the South lead him to become an abolitionist and become attracted to Marmee a strong willed woman with similar ideas and beliefs. The books talks of their marriage and the births of their four children - Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy, the Little Women girls from Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women - and their friendship with the Thoreau and Emerson families. However the majority of the book is dedicated towards Peter's time as a chaplain in the Civil War and is Brook's imagined view of what Peter was really going through as he wrote the letters home to the Little Women, Brooks based a lot of Peter's character and experiences on the journals and other documentation of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson. Very well told story, engaging and captivating, a great work of historical fiction.
Beautifully written book about the father from Litte Women.
dark
emotional
funny
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An emotional gut punch and a fascinating look at an often-overlooked aspect of the Civil War. Mr. March and Marmee are mysterious figures in Little Women, and this book fleshes them out in rich and raw detail, presenting a gritty, less sanitized version of that world, but still with wry humor and beauty.
Oh I had no idea what I was getting into with this! All I knew was that it was about Mr March and that I should reread Little Women before it.
Super clever and fascinating historical fiction!
Narration wasn’t my fav, especially in “part 2”. (Listened on audible). Mrs. March needed her own narrator.
I love Ms. Brooks’ writing style! It’s poetic and beautiful and complex - you totally tell the thoughtful care each phrase and sentence holds yet it’s not frustrating or taxing to read.
I did get eye-rolly at the plot… but I do have a lot of Skiles in me.
Super clever and fascinating historical fiction!
Narration wasn’t my fav, especially in “part 2”. (Listened on audible). Mrs. March needed her own narrator.
I love Ms. Brooks’ writing style! It’s poetic and beautiful and complex - you totally tell the thoughtful care each phrase and sentence holds yet it’s not frustrating or taxing to read.
I did get eye-rolly at the plot… but I do have a lot of Skiles in me.
Reading for June Book Club! Really enjoyed it. Thought I would go back and read Little Women again, but on further reflection, I'm much more interested in Alcott's life and history than I am in the "goody-goody Marches". Very well written.
I’m opening this review with a rant on other reviewers.
If you pick up a book which says it’s related in some way to another book – for example, “March” is related to “Little Women” - yet it is not by the same author, you need to put aside the thought that it is going to be the same book or even at all like the original book. Please, please, please, for the love of all that is literary, just read the book in your hand & stop comparing and contrasting already! If you cannot do that – if reading the second book is going to somehow ruin your experience of the first book – then don’t read the second book! That choice is perfectly OK. But it is not OK to read the second book & then grump about how it’s not at all like the first one. Different. Authors. Yes?! OK, end of rant.
I loved “March” because it’s well written and full of interesting characters, though some of those characters are just a little one dimensional (Grace). It’s about people who are flawed, as we all are. I don’t think this book is really about the Civil War and slavery and so forth – that just provides the background. I know some readers have felt that the war & slavery issues were glossed over, and I think that’s because this novel is really about Mr. & Mrs. March. It’s about how a man might meet challenges to his principles – one at a time – in a time of violence and explosive growth in ideas. It’s about a strong-willed woman – Marmee – who struggles every day to become the calm, wise, self-disciplined woman March believes she can be - & that her society tells her she must be. It’s about pride – encompassed in the idea that we should always be striving toward some ideal of behavior or principles, & if we don’t reach it we have failed – and the idea that we are responsible for, or can control, the behavior or outcomes of others. It’s about forgiveness & how hard that is, whether it’s forgiveness for ourselves or others. It’s about falling, & getting back up again. Is it all tied up in a neat bow with Mr. March learning from his mistakes & returning a wiser man? Does Marmee come back to her girls with a completely recovered husband & an untroubled soul? Nope. No pretty 19th century endings here - Brooks is far less merciful than that, & much more invested in her complex, noble, faltering characters, who give us a richer vision of what people in a violent, changing time might have to overcome.
If you pick up a book which says it’s related in some way to another book – for example, “March” is related to “Little Women” - yet it is not by the same author, you need to put aside the thought that it is going to be the same book or even at all like the original book. Please, please, please, for the love of all that is literary, just read the book in your hand & stop comparing and contrasting already! If you cannot do that – if reading the second book is going to somehow ruin your experience of the first book – then don’t read the second book! That choice is perfectly OK. But it is not OK to read the second book & then grump about how it’s not at all like the first one. Different. Authors. Yes?! OK, end of rant.
I loved “March” because it’s well written and full of interesting characters, though some of those characters are just a little one dimensional (Grace). It’s about people who are flawed, as we all are. I don’t think this book is really about the Civil War and slavery and so forth – that just provides the background. I know some readers have felt that the war & slavery issues were glossed over, and I think that’s because this novel is really about Mr. & Mrs. March. It’s about how a man might meet challenges to his principles – one at a time – in a time of violence and explosive growth in ideas. It’s about a strong-willed woman – Marmee – who struggles every day to become the calm, wise, self-disciplined woman March believes she can be - & that her society tells her she must be. It’s about pride – encompassed in the idea that we should always be striving toward some ideal of behavior or principles, & if we don’t reach it we have failed – and the idea that we are responsible for, or can control, the behavior or outcomes of others. It’s about forgiveness & how hard that is, whether it’s forgiveness for ourselves or others. It’s about falling, & getting back up again. Is it all tied up in a neat bow with Mr. March learning from his mistakes & returning a wiser man? Does Marmee come back to her girls with a completely recovered husband & an untroubled soul? Nope. No pretty 19th century endings here - Brooks is far less merciful than that, & much more invested in her complex, noble, faltering characters, who give us a richer vision of what people in a violent, changing time might have to overcome.
I have to admit that this one was not an easy book to read. Too much pain, too much violence, too much war...Still the first part I liked and the second I loved and this has a lot to do with my love for Louisa May Alcott's Little women. But I think the thing I appreciate most of all, is the different mother/wife March. Marmee is a real woman, with her faults and her strengths and I am really happy that this book was written by a woman, because I do not think that a man could reach the deepest understanding of a married woman soul, but this ist just my idea.
Devo ammettere che questo non é stato un libro facile da leggere. Troppo dolore, troppa violenza, troppa guerra vera....Comunque se la prima parte mi é piaciuta, la seconda l'ho proprio divorata e questo ha molto a che fare con il mio amore per "Le piccole donne" di Louisa May Alcott. indubbiamente la cosa che più di tutto ho apprezzato è la versione differente di Marmee March, che da quasi santa diventa una donna vera, con tutti i suoi dubbi, i suoi passi falsi e la sua forza interiore, che dubito uno scrittore uomo sarebbe stato in grado di descrivere in tutte le sue sfaccettature, ma magari questa é solo la mia idea.
Devo ammettere che questo non é stato un libro facile da leggere. Troppo dolore, troppa violenza, troppa guerra vera....Comunque se la prima parte mi é piaciuta, la seconda l'ho proprio divorata e questo ha molto a che fare con il mio amore per "Le piccole donne" di Louisa May Alcott. indubbiamente la cosa che più di tutto ho apprezzato è la versione differente di Marmee March, che da quasi santa diventa una donna vera, con tutti i suoi dubbi, i suoi passi falsi e la sua forza interiore, che dubito uno scrittore uomo sarebbe stato in grado di descrivere in tutte le sue sfaccettature, ma magari questa é solo la mia idea.
Maybe it's my fondness of Little Women. Maybe it is the complexity of the protagonist and the women in his life. In any case, I really enjoyed listening to this and was especially delighted when the novel intersected with familiar moments in Little Women.