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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
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.
I had a sudden need to read something other than my own books and chapters and texts for University, and so I took notes at our last Reading Seals meeting and then went online and reserved a ton of Recommended Reading. I had read Brooks’ Year of Wonders (in February) and had recommended that myself. I noted March then because somebody else had read others by her, so when it came up a second time it was highlighted somewhat for me.
Most conveniently, I was going to be spending several hours in aeroplanes over the weekend, and so I grabbed 2 of the 6 books that had come in quickly to the library. This was one of them.
One of our members thought it a bit suspect for an author to “pinch” another author’s characters. I’m still ambivalent. I enjoyed this book. I don’t know the Little Women characters – never read them when I was young, and haven’t got around to it since, though I think I ought. But it’s still taking a liberty, and also she inserts a couple of non-fictional personages, in the form of Thoreau and Emerson. Well, as Brooks tells us in the Afterword, these men were compatriots of Alcott’s father. She also models March (Mr. – of the title … and I don’t think he’s given a Christian name anywhere. Funny, I didn’t notice that throughout the book, because it’s so vitally in the 1st person (a little in his wife’s voice towards the end, but that’s all)) on Bronson Alcott.
That aside, it’s a really good book. Set in the time of the USA’s Civil War, it follows March on his determined chaplaincy to the Union soldiers. Wound through it are connections to his youth as a pedlar in the Southern States, at which time he met the beautiful Grace, a slave to an Augustus Clement, owner of a cotton plantation. Also winding in and out of the “present” is the tale of his meeting and eventual marriage to Marmee, who readers of Little Women will know as the mother of Amy, Beth, Meg and Jo.
I enjoyed the character of March. I liked his combination of bravery and of foolhardiness. I appreciated his striving to be an enlightened educator and his need to care for all living creatures, even to the extent of being emotionally unable to eat meat (Go vegetarians!). I felt his struggles to be always what he believed in, and his frailty that caused him to slip and fall. I understood his terrible self-loathing. And I’m glad that I have never had to face the things he did. Would I be able to make choices that so followed my beliefs? They say that your true colours show when the chips are down (mixing metaphors – that’s terrible – and I think the latter idiom is about gambling, which I disapprove of … so I really shouldn’t use it!), and I don’t know what my true colours are. I would hope that they’re clear and strong, but fear they’re muddied pastels.
Most conveniently, I was going to be spending several hours in aeroplanes over the weekend, and so I grabbed 2 of the 6 books that had come in quickly to the library. This was one of them.
One of our members thought it a bit suspect for an author to “pinch” another author’s characters. I’m still ambivalent. I enjoyed this book. I don’t know the Little Women characters – never read them when I was young, and haven’t got around to it since, though I think I ought. But it’s still taking a liberty, and also she inserts a couple of non-fictional personages, in the form of Thoreau and Emerson. Well, as Brooks tells us in the Afterword, these men were compatriots of Alcott’s father. She also models March (Mr. – of the title … and I don’t think he’s given a Christian name anywhere. Funny, I didn’t notice that throughout the book, because it’s so vitally in the 1st person (a little in his wife’s voice towards the end, but that’s all)) on Bronson Alcott.
That aside, it’s a really good book. Set in the time of the USA’s Civil War, it follows March on his determined chaplaincy to the Union soldiers. Wound through it are connections to his youth as a pedlar in the Southern States, at which time he met the beautiful Grace, a slave to an Augustus Clement, owner of a cotton plantation. Also winding in and out of the “present” is the tale of his meeting and eventual marriage to Marmee, who readers of Little Women will know as the mother of Amy, Beth, Meg and Jo.
I enjoyed the character of March. I liked his combination of bravery and of foolhardiness. I appreciated his striving to be an enlightened educator and his need to care for all living creatures, even to the extent of being emotionally unable to eat meat (Go vegetarians!). I felt his struggles to be always what he believed in, and his frailty that caused him to slip and fall. I understood his terrible self-loathing. And I’m glad that I have never had to face the things he did. Would I be able to make choices that so followed my beliefs? They say that your true colours show when the chips are down (mixing metaphors – that’s terrible – and I think the latter idiom is about gambling, which I disapprove of … so I really shouldn’t use it!), and I don’t know what my true colours are. I would hope that they’re clear and strong, but fear they’re muddied pastels.
A terrific premise well-executed. Also well-researched.
One wee possible quibble would be the depiction of Marmy. Robert. March is hardly in Little Women at all. But Marmee, the mother, is featured throughout. So it seems to me that whatever Brooks does with Robert is pretty much fair game, as long as what she does doesn't change his occupation, etc. But it also seems to me that Marmee's characteristics from Little Women, as far as we know them, need to be maintained in March. I'm not sure that they are.
In addition, although we have an entire section narrated by Marmee, we don't get to hear from her regarding scenes earlier narrated by Robert, in which he describes her behavior. It would have been nice to have heard her side of the story. To the extent that we get it, it seems to conform to Robert's telling, but that doesn't always feel hoest or fair.
Highly recommended.
One wee possible quibble would be the depiction of Marmy. Robert. March is hardly in Little Women at all. But Marmee, the mother, is featured throughout. So it seems to me that whatever Brooks does with Robert is pretty much fair game, as long as what she does doesn't change his occupation, etc. But it also seems to me that Marmee's characteristics from Little Women, as far as we know them, need to be maintained in March. I'm not sure that they are.
In addition, although we have an entire section narrated by Marmee, we don't get to hear from her regarding scenes earlier narrated by Robert, in which he describes her behavior. It would have been nice to have heard her side of the story. To the extent that we get it, it seems to conform to Robert's telling, but that doesn't always feel hoest or fair.
Highly recommended.
Not often impressed with prize winning literature, but in this case, I am a devotee. I love the humanity of March. It's a story beyond race, war, and morality. Rarely in life do the light and dark recesses of my soul get to celebrate alternately from page to page.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At times it was terrifying in descriptions of the Civil War. What a gruesome war it was. Although [b:Little Women|1934|Little Women (Little Women, #1)|Louisa May Alcott|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309282614s/1934.jpg|3244642] spoke nothing of Mr. March's affair with Grace, it had a strong effect on the story here. I am very glad to have read this book.