A review by bluestjuice
Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott

2.0

In all honesty, this is a dreary book. Imagine the epilogue to the Harry Potter Series, which most people agree is somewhat hamfisted and not up to par, if not blatant fan service. Now imagine if J.K. Rowling had written it into a full eighth book, rather than a single chapter. That is what we have here. As the third (or fourth, depending on how you care to look at it) and final installment in the chronicle of the March sisters and their families, this draws much too heavily on the less-compelling Little Men for its characters and basically occupies itself giving small snippets and synopses of what happens to them when they reach adulthood. Half of the characters from Little Men are dismissed completely with two-line summaries, while the ones that remain are each dutifully given their trial, lesson, and ultimate happy ending. Mostly, the boys are married off to faceless but undoubtedly very sweet girls for whom it's impossible to care much, because they are such hollow caricatures. Two of the girls were so young in the preceding book that they are basically introduced fresh, and the best stories in all honesty have to do with their independent aspirations (theatrical Josie and pragmatic doctor Nan). There is a chapter early on in which Jo Bhaer, having acquired some literary success modeled directly off of Alcott's experience, relates the tribulations of being a famous author in that day and age. Of all the moralizing and sermonizing that happens in this book, that chapter rings the truest with both honest experience and humor. Otherwise, I could have been happy having this book compressed down to a single epilogue, a la Harry Potter.