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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Indelible, imperfect characters, history alive, and 100% deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.
I kept telling myself I'd come back to this one -- it's so short, it would take no time at all to finish it up. But no. I started this in August and it's been sitting on my bookshelf unopened since the end of August. The few pages I read (89) were enough to tell me that my brain just can't handle the heaviness of this one. I'm pretty sure I knew that in August when I was many weeks pregnant and I definitely know it know that I'm home with an infant. I'll come back to it though...one day.
Enjoyable enough, but I might have been better off re-reading Little Women.
Touching story building on Little Women. The father of the family goes off to assist the Union Army and learns what war is really like. He also learns that freedom from slavery is not that simple. I was impressed with this book.
As I was reading this book, I thought it deserved a solid 3 ⭐️’s but then I got to the chapter told from Marmee’s POV. Until that point, this book to be pretty standard Civil War fare…cruelty, inhumane acts, butchery, etc. I found Mr. March to be an idealistic and controlling man. His idealism led him to make poor decisions. He totally didn’t understand his wife and tried to dampen her true nature. Marmee had to face the consequences of his poor decisions while he “holed up” in his study and when he spontaneously got wrapped up in his own grandiose speech. I loved finding out how she really felt.
Brooks is a wonderful writer who transports you to another world. The story of the father of Little Women and his life away from his family during the year he is away during the Civil War. Definitely worth the read.
Did not finish. The book started out great and then plummeted and never got any better. I'm disappointed because I love this author.
I think my favorite of hers. Set at the time of the civil war, this is the story of Mr. March, of Louisia May Alcott's Little Woman (remember how in that book, the father was away at war nearly the entire book? Well, this is what was occurring to HIM during that whole time). Brook based her Mr. March on Alcott's own father, who like his close friends Thoreau and Emerson, was very much a free-thinker radical of his times. An outspoken activist against slavery, a vegetarian who started a commune and a transcendentalist, he wrote several hundred journals containing his philosophies and thoughts on the times which are now housed in the library of congress. I thought it was an thoroughly engrossing read and extremely well researched.