March
by Geraldine Brooks
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Book Reviews of March
Book Review: Mr. & Mrs. March
Summary: 5 Stars
Geraldine Brooks's Pulitzer Prize Award winner "March" has a clever starting. She tells the story that isn't in the beloved classic "Little Women"; we follow the lives of Mr. March and his wife Mrs. March, known Marmee. Most of the novel deals with the events he facew while he is away in the Civil War.
The little women from Luisa May Alcott's famous novel hardly make an appearance here. They are briefly mentioned from time to time, but the main character is indeed Mr. March. Flashbacks exploit his early life, when he was already an abolitionist and had problems when was teaching a slave child. We also learn how he met and fell in love with Marmee, and all he had to face when he joined the army.
The second part of the book is mostly narrated by Marmee, this is the period when she has to leave her home and go to the hospital where he is between life and death. For her disappointment, Mrs. March we will discover that her husband has secrets from the past, and she'll have to come to terms with them if she wants to keep a happy marriage.
Mr. and Mrs. March are two complementary forces. As one character wisely describes, `he lives for the ideas' and she is the one `left to deal with the practical matters of the life'. In other words he is the one that spends his time dreaming, while his wife is the one worried with material things that keep the family alive and together, like money and food. In this sense, the writer gives us two faces of the same coin of the marriage.
Brooks's narrative is slow and less exhilarating the Alcott's, but it is not boring, it requires patience and it is better if the reader is familiar with the novel "Little Women". The writer has succeeded most of the time in a difficult task that not many contemporary writers do. Since she has two narrators it is vital that they have different voices. And here they do most of the time.
Based on Alcott's own family, Brooks has created an interesting novel that will certainly appeal fans of "Little Women". The events and personalities she created to Mr. and Mrs. March make sense to how they brought their children up. This later prequel may not exist in an universe without the other novel, but it is a great complementary read.
Book Review: Richly Layered
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's my advice about reading "March." Skip to the Afterward and read it first. It's just a suggestion, particularly for those not familiar with "Little Women" and its place within the Civil War. I think you'll admire the research and sheer work that went into developing the concept of "March" and, as a result, more appreciative of the arc of the story and the punch it packs. Geraldine Brooks' idea for this book, frankly, is genius and it allows for the combination of solid research about the war and her vivid imagination. How many books of non-fiction and fiction can there be about the Civil War? "March" would suggest that there are few limits, particularly if the vein being mined is this rich. Mr. March's journey through the battlegrounds is the journey of an idealist running smack into reality--and paying the price. At his core, Mr. March firmly believes in the power of knowledge and learning, yet encounters slaves with "hands innocent of pen or quill." He is used to judging people by "how lettered" they are. (I was reading this book as Barack Obama was beginning his transition plans, shortly after the November election in 2008; it made for a fascinating backdrop to consider what was happening 140 years earlier.)
Mr. March encounters all the horrors of the war and yet protects his wife from the bloody details in his letters home--and from his own secrets as well. The result is a richly layered book through the first two-thirds that grows even more depth as Marmee arrives in Washington, D.C. to face the brutality first hand and the "dreadful alchemy" and "empty glory" of war and disease. Her anger is palpable--and covers thousands of years of remorse. "The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother--`Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat."
"March" is a brilliant book--I am amazed at how much ground Brooks covers in a fairly short novel and, reading it today, realize its insights apply, vivid and stark as they are.
Book Review: Moving, Thought, Provoking, Insightful
Summary: 4 Stars
I previously read Geraldine Brook's 'People of the Book' and 'Year of Wonders'. 'Year of Wonders' is one of my all time favorite books. I really enjoyed this story as well.
Brooks has created a moving account of Mr. March's experience during the Civil War. Mr. March is the father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.
This was our book club's book choice for September. I had every intention of reading Little Women before I started reading March. I never read Little Women and I thought I should have the back story before reading about Mr. March's. I checked out Little Women from my local library and started to read about the four March sisters but I didn't make it very far. I think with books, like many other things in life, 'timing is everything'. Little Women is clearly written for young girls and I am not a young girl, I feel certain that I missed my chance to love Louisa Alcott's classic by about thirty years or so.
And from the sound of the reviews from people who loved Little Women, perhaps my experience or lack thereof helped me enjoy this story better than I would have if I had read Little Women. I didn't have my own ideas about Mr. March and how perfect he was and so, I didn't feel betrayed or disappointed by anything he did.
I thought that Brooks painted a vivid picture of the complications that a man like Mr. March would endure as a chaplain during the civil war and as an idealist.
I thought the characters Brooks brings to life were realistic with both their strengths and weaknesses portrayed. Many times we think we understand these characters and their motivations only to discover we were wrong.
I enjoyed March's narration and perspective. I thought it was very clever of Brooks to give Mrs. March a chance to narrate and give us her perspective, there are two sides to every marriage and I was interested in hearing hers.
I found it to be a moving and insightful story that I would recommend to fans of historical fiction and I would say this would be a great choice for a book club that enjoys intellectual discussions.
Book Review: What hurt it for me....
Summary: 3 Stars
...was my inability to reconcile the firebrand character of Marmee March drawn here with the simpering, prim, ladylike character Alcott presented. (I also always assumed that "Marmee" was a maternal name, but guess not; apparently her "well-bred" 19th century New England daughters are calling their mother by her first name.) It's inconceivable that this Marmee, who's assertive and liberated even by 21st century standards, would ever have made that deeply troubling speech to Meg in LW about how it's her own fault that her husband doesn't spend so much time with her anymore now that she's had twins, and how she should make every effort to turn her home into a cheerful and pleasant place for him, etc. It was also clear in LW that the girls had little interest in politics or current events (poor Meg can barely keep her attention from wandering back to her new bonnet), and yet Brooks presents us with a family of active abolitionists, harboring fugitives from the Underground Railroad and passionately discussing the rights of the individual, Uncle Tom's Cabin, etc.
Other reviews have commented that March himself is not the least bit interesting or heroic--he continually fouls up, acts naive and attempts to repress his wife--and there's something to those remarks as well. (Although those who condemn him as an adulterer do not seem to have read the book closely.) Still, he's meant to be a flawed character--the parts he narrates ring true enough, largely because we don't have a preconceived notion of him. But Brooks's mistake is to tamper with already-established characters, and to alter them past recognition. If this had been a straight-up civil war story, rather than a literary retelling the built on a famous work, it would be both a better book and (ironically) not a Pulitzer winner.
This is minor, but Brooks makes some b.s. claim that the March family are all vegans. How can anyone forget the famous strawberries-and-cream scene at Jo's dinner party?????? Not to mention the chicken dinner at the Christmas Eve homecoming!
Book Review: The story of the invisible man
Summary: 4 Stars
A compelling story that moves from the antebellum South to the dawn of the Transcendental Movement in Concord, Mass. and back to the South during the Civil War, "March" tells the story of making difficult and terrible decisions, including the decision to hide the truth from loved ones.
In this Pulitizer prize winning novel Brooks effortlessly combines historical fiction, biography, and a sophisticated form of fan fiction. The historical fiction element is focused on the Civil War and the lives of those on the fringes. March, the main character, spends a great deal of his Civil War time working on a plantation that had been confiscated by the Union Army and sold to a Northerner. The biographical slant of this novel features many elements from the life of Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott. Like March, Alcott was an abolitionist, a strict vegetarian (he wouldn't even wear wool, let alone eat lamb!), and a man of ideas and ideals rather than action. And the fan fiction, of course, results from Brooks turning her focus on a nearly invisible character from one of America's most important novels, "Little Women." Brooks also features, in much smaller roles, the "little women" themselves: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Marmee also makes a significant appearance, but in a manner that might be nearly unrecognizable (but probably much more realistic) to her character in "Little Women."
Although I may not be the best judge as I have read "Little Women" probably more than a dozen times in my life, I think that "March" would stand on its own and be as strong a story for those who have never read this American classic. In fact, fans of "Little Women" might have a hard time with the depiction of Marmee as a strong-willed, even hot-tempered, woman. It is my opinion that as March really more closely depicts Bronson Alcott (rather than the unknown March of "Little Women"), Brooks' Marmee is more of a portrait of Abba Alcott, the strong-willed progressive (and long-suffering) wife of Bronson Alcott.