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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
Brooks paints a compelling backstory for Captain March, but overlooks what might have been the most compelling part of his story: how did the protagonist grow from the broken man we meet at the end of the book (and upon his return to Concord House) to the solid paternal figure we see in the second half of Little Women? I would have read a book twice as long to explore all the ways in which a person might (or might not) overcome those demons.
That said, it was a welcome return to the world of Little Women and an interesting take on a character we are less familiar with.
That said, it was a welcome return to the world of Little Women and an interesting take on a character we are less familiar with.
This was a really interesting take on one of my favorite books, Little Women. It was from the father's perspective, the one who was away at war. Bronson Alcott (Louisa May Alcott's father) provided some of the biographical basis for March and he was an interesting character himself. Very cool!
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Such an interesting perspective on a book I have read and loved. I listened to it as an audiobook and it made me dislike Mr. March in a way I don't think I would have if I had just read the book.
In the afterword to her novel, Brooks tells us that part of the reason Fruitlands, the utopian community established by A. Bronson Alcott (padrito de Louisa May and the man on whom her narrator is modeled), failed is because the Fruitlanders (no joke) refused to react with person-on-pest violence when canker worms took up residence in their apple crop. Had I read that first, I imagine I would have skipped this often wonderful but mostly frustrating novel. Our narrator, Mr. March, is a benighted fool hellbent on living out his noblest precepts. He joins the Union army late in life and travels south as a chaplain, which affords him the opportunity to piss off most everyone he encounters (including this reader) with his head-in-the-clouds idealism which (and this was a surprise) often does not serve him well in wartime. I know--whodathunk? There are some startling and wondrous passages in this novel--her account of the battle of Ball's Bluff which opens the novel is exceptionally well done--but in the end I can't get past our narrator, who I like even less at the novel's conclusion. It's an impressive book, but it just made me want to kill an orchard full of canker worms one-by-one just to show folk how it's done.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
loved this one - liked the perspective of this family and time period from the father's point of view.
I read this for the Chapman Book Club. I enjoyed it, although my patience grew thin with the main character. He wasn't very good at doing his job, but all in all, the look at the war was eye opening and I thought it was worth reading.
A few too many coincidences, and it's perhaps a little too sentimental, but I enjoyed the premise and the writing a great deal.
Our narrator, Mr. March, is a Union soldier; he's also father to four beloved sisters-—Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy—taking his offstage journey during the events of the first half of "Little Women." As the little women have their famously instructive scrapes—falling into an ice-covered pond, chopping off hair to raise money,-—Mr. March experiences his own moral education, and sees his lofty ideals (based on those of transcendentalist, and father to Louisa, Bronson Alcott) blown apart by violence.
From ugly battlefield scenes to pre-war plantations to a colony of freed slaves brutally and murderously recaptured by Southern profiteers, Brooks purposefully builds a tale of contrasts. Even Mr. and Mrs. March have totally different views of their marriage--each thinks the other is the unflinching abolitionist, each blames the other for the total sacrifice the family has made for the cause.
Whether in a universal moral context (can war ever be just?), the context of a family or relationship, or even within Mr. March's tortured soul unable to live up to his ideals, Brooks implies that the idols to truth we erect are a flimsy bunch. But, the novel counters, the love and healing we offer each other can redeem us from this bleak minefield of ambiguity—-taking a cue from the supposedly-simple children’s classic whose themes and characters “March” poaches.
If "March" deals too much with Civil War-era cliches, it's a quick and absorbing and question-raising read for fans of either that troubling epoch in history or Alcott's life and work.
From ugly battlefield scenes to pre-war plantations to a colony of freed slaves brutally and murderously recaptured by Southern profiteers, Brooks purposefully builds a tale of contrasts. Even Mr. and Mrs. March have totally different views of their marriage--each thinks the other is the unflinching abolitionist, each blames the other for the total sacrifice the family has made for the cause.
Whether in a universal moral context (can war ever be just?), the context of a family or relationship, or even within Mr. March's tortured soul unable to live up to his ideals, Brooks implies that the idols to truth we erect are a flimsy bunch. But, the novel counters, the love and healing we offer each other can redeem us from this bleak minefield of ambiguity—-taking a cue from the supposedly-simple children’s classic whose themes and characters “March” poaches.
If "March" deals too much with Civil War-era cliches, it's a quick and absorbing and question-raising read for fans of either that troubling epoch in history or Alcott's life and work.