Reviews

The Little Women by Katharine Weber

kittykornerlibrarian's review against another edition

3.0

I liked it. It manages to be original while at the same time hearkening back to the plot, story, and language of Alcott's Little Women. There are three sisters, college student Meg, high school junior Jo, and high school freshman Amy. When they discover some unsuspected family drama, feelings run high and the three girls decide to shift for themselves on their own. Fortunately, there seems to be quite a bit of family money to finance this endeavor. It's a little self-conscious at times, but this balances out with clever language and dialogue twists that are truly delightful. And it's certainly a pleasure to meet up with Harriet Rose again.

lola425's review against another edition

3.0

Loved Weber's use of language and was really into the Green family story, but I was not that interested in the girls' life after they abandoned their parents. The reader's notes were interesting--they were a critique of the novel you were reading, of Alcott's Little Women, and fiction in general.

Weber did not exactly map March and the Green girls and that was good. So you weren't reading modernized versions of Alcott's characters, but characters with Alcott-like qualities.

I would recommend for the writing alone, especially if you are willing to overlook the rampant privilege (harder to do now than it had been) and if you are not looking for a retelling of Little Women.

milola's review against another edition

1.0

whoa. i really disliked this book. the only glimmer was the (gratuitous) mention of new haven landmarks. even those seemed like a stretch to make the book feel somewhat comforting to people familiar with the locale.

happy to be done.

oh yeah. the last book i read that i disliked to the same degree was The Great Gatsby. a book the main characters in the Little Women absolutely cherish. what a cool coincidence.

crowyhead's review against another edition

4.0

A clever story that speaks volumes about the way we create personal narratives for ourselves and others, then become angry when reality doesn't match with our preconceived notions.

xoxocheyekay's review against another edition

4.0

I wasn't quite sure what to think of this book at first. It's a novel based on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women with the three main characters (sisters) named Meg, Joanna and Amy. However, the novel completely diverges from there. The sisters find out about their mother's affair, and although their parents are unconcerned as it has been resolved, they take great offense and Jo and Amy go with Meg to school.

I'm giving this four stars because I found it to be rather witty and the ending was very clever. I also appreciated the exploration of their feelings and their relationship as sisters.

mattie's review

1.0

[2005 review.] What a truly terrible book. I was intrigued by the gimmick -- the three main characters are named Meg, Jo and Amy after the sisters in the Louisa May Alcott novel of almost the same name -- and the premise -- upset by the discovery of their mother's affair they run away from their apparently perfect home to live with Meg at college. But the execution was abysmal: nothing at all happens, there's no real plot, no rising or falling action, so the whole way through I felt like the book was just getting started and any minute now the actual story would begin. There are absolutely no obstacles to overcome, so the girls live in a stagnant bubble, where money isn't a problem, where their parents don't object to their estrangement. I did somewhat enjoy some of the more pop culturey aspects of the book, when the conversational tone felt realistic and everyday, but there were more than enough missteps in the same to balance it out. The interjections the whole way through by the 'author' (Jo) and her sisters at first seemed like they might provide an interesting kind of dialogue but instead they become unbearably tedious and pointless. And worst of all, the whole book echoes the major scenes of Alcott's novel nonsensically -- while the main characters are aware of the connection between their names and the other book they never notice how their lives are totally parodying it. I suppose some of the similarities, such as the names (Teddy, Ursula) could be explained by the fact that this is supposedly written by Jo herself, but that doesn't explain Amy's egg roll incident, the Aunt March figure complete with trip to Paris, etc, so the book ends up hovering in a weird limbo between self awareness and mimicry. Plus using the excuse that Jo is the author, not Weber, only ends up leading to the conclusion that Weber has intentionally written a bad book.

I also think this was probably the first book to ever make me groan aloud, during a discussion of dead dogs: "His name was Ezra. He came from the pound."