Status
Available
Publication
New York : Viking, 2005.
Description
An extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history by the author of the international bestseller Year of Wonders From Louisa May Alcott s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With"pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks s place as a renowned author of historical fiction.… (more)
Media reviews
Brooks is capable of strong writing about the natural world and nicely researched effects about the human one (on the eve of a battle, March sees ''the surgeon flinging down sawdust to receive the blood that was yet to flow''), but the book she has produced makes a distressing contribution to
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recent trends in historical fiction, which, after a decade or so of increased literary and intellectual weight, seems to be returning to its old sentimental contrivances and costumes. Show Less
Fascinating insight, don’t read if you’re a Little Women purist.
User reviews
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
I have been nervous about reading March by Geraldine Brooks, even though I have enjoyed her previous novels, as I have such a strong attachment to Little Women and I feared Brooks’ vision wouldn’t agree with mine. I am happy to report that other than minor differences, Geraldine Brooks has
The author draws on her own experience as a war correspondent to vividly describe both battle scenes and conditions in a realistic way. Through the eyes of Peter March, we are able to picture the small events and narrow views of one man’s war experiences. As a chaplain he is mostly dealing with the wounded , the sick and the dead. Being a man of such strong anti-slavery convictions and being totally against violence, he spends a lot of his time wrestling with the morality of war and his own guilt. Not be able to accept even the most casual racism that was prevalent even on the Yankee side, he soon found himself transferred from the regular army to a captured Plantation to deal with the education of ex-slaves.
I was a little taken aback with Brooks view of Marmee, but as I read deeper into the book, her interpretation grew on me and seemed right. I haven’t read Little Women in years, but I now realize, that the Marmee depicted in that book is too good, too saintly to be real. This author saw beneath the veneer and gave the women flesh and blood.
In the end I loved this story of a naïve dreamer going to war and having to face his own shortcomings, and learning the lesson of what is important in life. March by Geraldine Brooks deserves it’s Pulitzer Prize, and is a book I am proud to have share the shelf with the original Louisa May Alcott novels about this family.
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delivered an excellent, moving story of how a man of conscience experienced the Civil War over the course of one year. The author draws on her own experience as a war correspondent to vividly describe both battle scenes and conditions in a realistic way. Through the eyes of Peter March, we are able to picture the small events and narrow views of one man’s war experiences. As a chaplain he is mostly dealing with the wounded , the sick and the dead. Being a man of such strong anti-slavery convictions and being totally against violence, he spends a lot of his time wrestling with the morality of war and his own guilt. Not be able to accept even the most casual racism that was prevalent even on the Yankee side, he soon found himself transferred from the regular army to a captured Plantation to deal with the education of ex-slaves.
I was a little taken aback with Brooks view of Marmee, but as I read deeper into the book, her interpretation grew on me and seemed right. I haven’t read Little Women in years, but I now realize, that the Marmee depicted in that book is too good, too saintly to be real. This author saw beneath the veneer and gave the women flesh and blood.
In the end I loved this story of a naïve dreamer going to war and having to face his own shortcomings, and learning the lesson of what is important in life. March by Geraldine Brooks deserves it’s Pulitzer Prize, and is a book I am proud to have share the shelf with the original Louisa May Alcott novels about this family.
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LibraryThing member andreablythe
I didn't realize this was a new spin on Little Women until I picked up the book. While I loved the 1994 Little Women movie, I didn't actually read Louisa May Alcott's book until I was an adult and by that point I found it far too goody-goody and moralizing. So, I don't think I would have picked up
Instead of following the March girl's lives as they wait for their father's return from the Civil War, the story is told from the point of view of Robert March as he tries to minister to the troops and help emancipate and educate slaves. The story explores the brutality of war, the racism of the North in its approach to freeing blacks, and the impact the war has on March's physical and mental state. In the same way that Alcott based the Little Women on her real-life sisters, Brooks based Robert March on Alcott's father, who was a radical liberal. Mr. Alcott was firmly for Emancipation and was a vegetarian, who founded a Utopian commune that failed, because its inhabitants refused to kill the infestation of worms invading its apple crops.
Brooks is a wonderful writer. The style is clear and vivid in its portrayal of the Civil War South. And though the story is far more brutal, bloody, and graphic than the children's book it's based on, Brooks managed to capture the thread of that moralizing tone, which was just under the surface of every description, so that the novel felt as though it fit neatly within the fictional realm of Little Women.
One of the things that fascinated me about the novel and kept me interested was the ways in which Robert March lied in his letters home to his wife and his Little Women. It's understandable that he would not want to worry them with the true turmoils of war and it sets up and interesting duality between his home life and the life he now lives on the battlefield.
I don't know how to talk about this book without talking about bits from the ending, so WARNING: spoilers ahead.
Spoiler 1 — At the end of the novel, when March is on his sickbed and nearing death, the POV switches to his wife and we see how Robert misunderstood her feeling and how she misunderstood his. It's a wonderful moment (in literature, but hard on the characters) that shows just how easy it is to mistake people and how you can love and know someone for years and not really understand them.
Spoiler 2 — Throughout the story, I was a bit annoyed by Robert March and his wife, both of whom were avidly for Emancipation to the point of being almost too noble, too good, coming across as great white heroes of the Civil War. This was especially evident in the way March feels about one slave he meets named Grace, who has been educated and who he makes into a symbol for what the "Negro" can become.
At the end of the story, when March is wracked with guilt and insists on finding someway to make himself useful to Grace, she turns him down. She tells him that she doesn't need him, that the blacks need to be able to take care of themselves, and that the best thing he can do is to go home and preach emancipation and equality to other white people.
I can't even tell you how relieved I was to see this scene presented and it was that moment that really brought me from liking this novel to loving it.
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this book, if not for the fact that I loved Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book so much. Instead of following the March girl's lives as they wait for their father's return from the Civil War, the story is told from the point of view of Robert March as he tries to minister to the troops and help emancipate and educate slaves. The story explores the brutality of war, the racism of the North in its approach to freeing blacks, and the impact the war has on March's physical and mental state. In the same way that Alcott based the Little Women on her real-life sisters, Brooks based Robert March on Alcott's father, who was a radical liberal. Mr. Alcott was firmly for Emancipation and was a vegetarian, who founded a Utopian commune that failed, because its inhabitants refused to kill the infestation of worms invading its apple crops.
Brooks is a wonderful writer. The style is clear and vivid in its portrayal of the Civil War South. And though the story is far more brutal, bloody, and graphic than the children's book it's based on, Brooks managed to capture the thread of that moralizing tone, which was just under the surface of every description, so that the novel felt as though it fit neatly within the fictional realm of Little Women.
One of the things that fascinated me about the novel and kept me interested was the ways in which Robert March lied in his letters home to his wife and his Little Women. It's understandable that he would not want to worry them with the true turmoils of war and it sets up and interesting duality between his home life and the life he now lives on the battlefield.
I don't know how to talk about this book without talking about bits from the ending, so WARNING: spoilers ahead.
Spoiler 1 — At the end of the novel, when March is on his sickbed and nearing death, the POV switches to his wife and we see how Robert misunderstood her feeling and how she misunderstood his. It's a wonderful moment (in literature, but hard on the characters) that shows just how easy it is to mistake people and how you can love and know someone for years and not really understand them.
Spoiler 2 — Throughout the story, I was a bit annoyed by Robert March and his wife, both of whom were avidly for Emancipation to the point of being almost too noble, too good, coming across as great white heroes of the Civil War. This was especially evident in the way March feels about one slave he meets named Grace, who has been educated and who he makes into a symbol for what the "Negro" can become.
At the end of the story, when March is wracked with guilt and insists on finding someway to make himself useful to Grace, she turns him down. She tells him that she doesn't need him, that the blacks need to be able to take care of themselves, and that the best thing he can do is to go home and preach emancipation and equality to other white people.
I can't even tell you how relieved I was to see this scene presented and it was that moment that really brought me from liking this novel to loving it.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
"Then what, pray, is the point?" His voice was a dry, soft rattle, like a breeze through a bough of dead leaves.
"The point is the effort. That you, believing what you believed -- what you sincerely believed, including the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' -- acted upon it. To believe, to act, and
Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women, describes a year in the life of a mother and her daughters, while her husband is away serving in the Union Army. The father is absent for most of the book. In March, Geraldine Brooks brings the father's character to life and tells the story of that year from his point of view. Mr. March is a clergyman, so while he does not experience combat directly, he ministers to the wounded and dying. Initially, after a harrowing battle scene, he finds himself on a plantation that he had first encountered as a young itinerant peddler. Old relationships are rekindled, and he is reassigned to another regiment, and transported to a Southern estate under Union occupation. The slaves on this estate were under Union protection, and Mr. March was to provide them with the basics of an education. The novel's pace picks up at this point, and becomes considerably more violent as the horrors of war are revealed. March eventually lands in hospital, is visited by his wife Marmee, and returns home for Christmas just as he does in Little Women. In March we gain much more intimate knowledge of how the war scarred him, both physically and mentally, and how it affected his relationship with Marmee.
I was hooked on this story from page 1. Scenes from the American Civil War were interspersed with narrative describing how Mr. March came to be married to Marmee, their participation in the Underground Railroad, and his motivation for joining the Union army. He wrote letters from the front but, reluctant to burden his family with his daily horrors, he masked the truth. Marmee, on the other hand. felt lonely and resentful: "I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces." (p. 211) Their reunion was touched with both sadness and hope.
In letting her imagination run around the edges of Little Women, Brooks has written a memorable novel. Highly recommended.
"The point is the effort. That you, believing what you believed -- what you sincerely believed, including the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' -- acted upon it. To believe, to act, and
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to have events confound you--I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act ... That is what would have been reprehensible." (p. 258) Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women, describes a year in the life of a mother and her daughters, while her husband is away serving in the Union Army. The father is absent for most of the book. In March, Geraldine Brooks brings the father's character to life and tells the story of that year from his point of view. Mr. March is a clergyman, so while he does not experience combat directly, he ministers to the wounded and dying. Initially, after a harrowing battle scene, he finds himself on a plantation that he had first encountered as a young itinerant peddler. Old relationships are rekindled, and he is reassigned to another regiment, and transported to a Southern estate under Union occupation. The slaves on this estate were under Union protection, and Mr. March was to provide them with the basics of an education. The novel's pace picks up at this point, and becomes considerably more violent as the horrors of war are revealed. March eventually lands in hospital, is visited by his wife Marmee, and returns home for Christmas just as he does in Little Women. In March we gain much more intimate knowledge of how the war scarred him, both physically and mentally, and how it affected his relationship with Marmee.
I was hooked on this story from page 1. Scenes from the American Civil War were interspersed with narrative describing how Mr. March came to be married to Marmee, their participation in the Underground Railroad, and his motivation for joining the Union army. He wrote letters from the front but, reluctant to burden his family with his daily horrors, he masked the truth. Marmee, on the other hand. felt lonely and resentful: "I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces." (p. 211) Their reunion was touched with both sadness and hope.
In letting her imagination run around the edges of Little Women, Brooks has written a memorable novel. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Cariola
I seem to have had this book on my shelf forever, and I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get around to it. As everyone probably knows, this is an imagined background story to Alcott's Little Women: instead of focusing on the daughters, about 3/4 of the novel is about the March family
Brooks has obviously done her research here: the book comes alive with real-life characters, including Brown, Emerson, and Thoreau, and the pictures she draws of the nation at war, both on the field and at home, are powerful. The March parents lose some of their ever-optimistic facade--but that's perhaps a good thing. Here, they become real people, caught up, as so many Americans were, in the fury of the civil war and its effects on the individual, the family, and the nation.
The writing here is as fine as it was in Brooks's earlier novel, Year of Wonders (which remains my favorite). Strongly recommended.
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patriarch, and the last quarter is told from the point of view of Marmee, starting when she goes to the union hospital to nurse her desperately ill husband. Mr. March, bolstered by his wife's near-fanaticism, is an ardent abolitionist--to the point that he has lost his fortune to John Brown's schemes. Even so, he still believes in the cause, in part due to his encounters years earlier with an inteligent, attractive young slave and her brutal master. An influential pastor, March encourages the young men of Concord to enlist in the Union cause, and his guilt ultimately drives him to enlist as well. His civil war service begins by ministering to the soldiers on the field, but he is later assigned to teach freed slaves how to read and write on an experimental communal farm. When Marmee rushes to Washington to nurse her husband, who is suffering from a deadly fever, she has to come to grips with his secrets and her own guilt.Brooks has obviously done her research here: the book comes alive with real-life characters, including Brown, Emerson, and Thoreau, and the pictures she draws of the nation at war, both on the field and at home, are powerful. The March parents lose some of their ever-optimistic facade--but that's perhaps a good thing. Here, they become real people, caught up, as so many Americans were, in the fury of the civil war and its effects on the individual, the family, and the nation.
The writing here is as fine as it was in Brooks's earlier novel, Year of Wonders (which remains my favorite). Strongly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Doey
Disgraceful that this book won the Pulizter. Where does Brooks get the idea that Marmee's name was actually Marmee as opposed to what her children called here. She takes liberties with the orgininal that are without basis and defiles the classic.
LibraryThing member tututhefirst
I suspect that the majority of the women who learned to read in the past 100 years have read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Geraldine Brooks was one of them, and using the framework provided by LMA she has written the fictional tale of "Mr. March"-- the absent father of the family, who went off
Brooks gives us a man who is a selfish vegetarian, whose stand on principles often cost people's lives, who is definitely NOT the daddy that appears in Little Women. We are given gruesome battle scenes, murders, torture, and all the inhumanity man can inflict upon his fellow human beings. We also see "Marmee", (was that really her name?) when she comes to DC to minister to her husband in an Army hospital (as portrayed in Alcott's original story), but it is really the character of the slave Grace Clement who is the strong woman in the story. The book includes Brooks' notes on other sources she used to concoct the story, from medical texts to autobiographies.
It's a well-written story, perhaps even deserving the Pulitzer Prize it won (I'm not qualified as a literature critic to make that call), but I fail to see what it really has to do with Little Women, and in the end, I almost feel that it demeans Louise May Alcott's work by trying to hang this story on hers. This March person, by Brooks' own admission, has only his radical views in common with Bronson Alcott, for instance Alcott was not a clergyman, did not go south during the War, and was not at any of the battle depicted in the book. Yes it was fiction, yes it departed from known facts, but I'd have preferred a totally fictional story that could have stood on its own.
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to minister to Union troops during the Civil War. Bronson Alcott, Louisa's father, was a "radical, even by the yardstick of nineteenth-century New England...He recorded his own life in sixty-one journals, and his letters fill thirty-seven manuscript volumes in the Harvard College Library." (pg. 252), providing Brooks with copious inspiration.Brooks gives us a man who is a selfish vegetarian, whose stand on principles often cost people's lives, who is definitely NOT the daddy that appears in Little Women. We are given gruesome battle scenes, murders, torture, and all the inhumanity man can inflict upon his fellow human beings. We also see "Marmee", (was that really her name?) when she comes to DC to minister to her husband in an Army hospital (as portrayed in Alcott's original story), but it is really the character of the slave Grace Clement who is the strong woman in the story. The book includes Brooks' notes on other sources she used to concoct the story, from medical texts to autobiographies.
It's a well-written story, perhaps even deserving the Pulitzer Prize it won (I'm not qualified as a literature critic to make that call), but I fail to see what it really has to do with Little Women, and in the end, I almost feel that it demeans Louise May Alcott's work by trying to hang this story on hers. This March person, by Brooks' own admission, has only his radical views in common with Bronson Alcott, for instance Alcott was not a clergyman, did not go south during the War, and was not at any of the battle depicted in the book. Yes it was fiction, yes it departed from known facts, but I'd have preferred a totally fictional story that could have stood on its own.
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LibraryThing member theageofsilt
I must confess a weariness with novels set during the Civil War. All the slaves are beautiful and all the slave children are above average. The plantation-owners wives are silly or insane and the men are cultivated, but unprincipaled. The novel is a "Heart of Darkness" meets "Little Women". March
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is the father of the "Little Women" household and modeled on Alcott's real father, Bronson Alcott. The descriptions of battle and hospitals are gripping, but I felt like I had read it all before. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ambergold
I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book. After all, as a Pulitzer-Prize winner loosely based on a character from Little Women, and written by Geraldine Brooks, whose vision brought a glow to Year of Wonders, it had everything going for it. Imagine my shock and horror then when I picked it up,
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settled down for a long, rich read, and looked up after two pages with a dreadful sinking feeling. For anyone who read and loved Little Women as a child, this book is not merely a travesty - it's a nightmare. And for anyone who loves good literature, it's that worst of all things - a book that should be magnificent, and isn't. Quite apart from the fact that the moral, upright, warm and loving father and dedicated army chaplain from Little Women is transformed into a womanizing, lying, deceitful, weak man whose only real belief rests in a complete disillusionment with the world(a character quite incapable of being the center of a classic)the entire novel is written in his voice, one of the few I've ever encountered that inspired an actual loathing in me. Brooks' style in this book, conveyed through this man's endlessly self-pitying, whining, and over-formal point of view, is strained and ultimately intensely unconvincing. These flaws in character and style could even have been forgiven however had not this entire book been written with one apparent purpose, and one only - to propagate a particular agenda. Every author, particularly the great ones, conveys in their novels some deeply held belief or question. But what makes them great is that their vision, their novel, transcends the narrow limits of this purpose - they write for all humanity, and thus deal with issues and characters that speak to and of all humanity. March is a narrow, self-limiting book utterly consumed with the self-absorption of its narrator and the mindless cruelty, racism, and godlessness which the author apparently believes were a characteristic of many, if not most, of the people in the Civil War, particularly but not limited to the soldiers of the Northern side. Attacking what has often been seen and projected as the "good" side - the North, in this case, and the whites, is a writer's trick that has been used before to gain attention, but never with this particular brand of blatancy; a reverse form of stereotyping. It's a book written for the times, hence the Pulitzer, but will last no longer than the few years it takes for the world to forget that it once won the highest award the literary world has to offer. With the memories of many of the other great past Pulitzer-winning novels, from Sophie's Choice to The Hours, hovering close in my mind, this book is an insult to all good literature. Show Less
LibraryThing member turtlesleap
In the children's classic, "Little Women," Mr. March is a minor character, far from the center of the action but emotionally important to the family. "March" brings him front and center and shows us an entirely different sort of man than we may have imagined. Brooks has loosely based her character
On the plus side, Brooks did a fine job of even handedly presenting the squalor,horror and sadness of the Civil War and a good job of underlining the obliviousness of the typical19th Century man to what was close the heart of the women in his life. Still, if you want to read Brooks, try "Year of Wonders." It's simply a better book.
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on Alcott's own father, drawing the character and personality of March from her imagination. He is a man about whom one might charitably say, "His intentions were good." So they were, but the character falls far short of the idea portrayed in "Little Women." He is a man deeply flawed, weak, misguided and yet fundamentally kind and decent. Brooks' interpretation of "Marmee" was still more disturbing. The character in "March" simply did not square with the character in "Little Women." On the plus side, Brooks did a fine job of even handedly presenting the squalor,horror and sadness of the Civil War and a good job of underlining the obliviousness of the typical19th Century man to what was close the heart of the women in his life. Still, if you want to read Brooks, try "Year of Wonders." It's simply a better book.
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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
Could you hold to your ideals if to do so caused you some physical discomfort? If it caused you embarrassment? If it cost you your fortune? If to do so could result in your death? Some people would say yes to all four. Could you hold on to your ideals if to do so would cause physical discomfort,
When Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women she based the characters on her own mother and sisters. In writing March, Geraldine Brooks uses the absent father from Little Women as her main character, and bases him on Louisa's real father Bronson Alcott. Alcott was a famous 19th century radical vegetarian utopian. He impoverished his family by using his money to support various causes. Brooks read many of Alcott's diaries and letters, and even used his own words in a letter her character writes to his wife. She, and Louisa May, have March going off to the Civil War even though he was 40 – a little too old to be with the young fighting men. Alcott was in his sixties during the Civil War, so he did not fight, but there was no better situation in which to show the challenge to idealism than war. The Civil War is viewed by most people (except some Southerners) as a justifiable war, a war for a humanitarian purpose, but Brooks shows that war, any war challenges the ideals of people involved, at least it challenges the ideals of people who have them. Some people in the book are shown to have no ideals, so no conflict. If they want to have a thing or kill a person, they go for it and crush anyone in their way. Some other people are found to have fine ideals for themselves and those they think of as their peers but no problem seeing other people as merely animate property. The moral, idealistic people in the book are the ones challenged on all levels even on levels they weren't aware of. When speaking of how she works to keep her family alive, Marmee (March's wife) says, “I had tried to bear the small insults and indignities of poverty, even to embrace, as he did, the virtues of a simple life. But where he might retire to his study and be wafted off on some contemplation of the Oversoul, it was I who felt harassed at every hour by our indebtedness and demeaned by begging credit here and there; I who had to go hungry so that he and the girls might eat. Oh, he gardened to put food on our table, and chopped wood for others when the larder was truly bare. And what praise he won for it: 'Orpheus at the plow,' Mr. Emerson hailed him. (No one thought to attach such a poetic label to me, though I might wear myself to a raveling with the hundred little shifts necessary to sustain us all.)”
Marmee ( which I always thought was some stupid way of saying Mommie but find is really the nickname for Margaret Marie) and March are shown to be very passionate people who share a philosophy of social justice and even renovate their homes to become a stop on the Underground Railway. Their friends are (Ralph) Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. They meet and become entangled with John Brown. Marmee has an explosive temper. There's a character modeled after Harriet Ann Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. There are scenes of medical carnage and neglect from Louisa Alcott's Hospital Sketches, there are battle scenes from the viewpoint of the grunts. A large part of the book is set on a leased farm in the South run by an ignorant Northerner where “contrabands”, slaves who escape or are freed by the war, are supposed to be paid for their work for the first time in their lives. A portion is set in Washington DC where stench filled muddy streets and crowded boarding houses are contrasted with elegant homes. In March practicality is contrasted with realism, ideals are contrasted with immorality, life is shown to be almost unbearably complex. This book and its imperfect characters filled my mind, and may even enable me to read Little Women without cringing.
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embarrassment, financial loss or even death to your friends, family or many other people? When is holding on to ideals not idealistic but just an expression of pride? Geraldine Brooks says in an interview, “Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own” . When Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women she based the characters on her own mother and sisters. In writing March, Geraldine Brooks uses the absent father from Little Women as her main character, and bases him on Louisa's real father Bronson Alcott. Alcott was a famous 19th century radical vegetarian utopian. He impoverished his family by using his money to support various causes. Brooks read many of Alcott's diaries and letters, and even used his own words in a letter her character writes to his wife. She, and Louisa May, have March going off to the Civil War even though he was 40 – a little too old to be with the young fighting men. Alcott was in his sixties during the Civil War, so he did not fight, but there was no better situation in which to show the challenge to idealism than war. The Civil War is viewed by most people (except some Southerners) as a justifiable war, a war for a humanitarian purpose, but Brooks shows that war, any war challenges the ideals of people involved, at least it challenges the ideals of people who have them. Some people in the book are shown to have no ideals, so no conflict. If they want to have a thing or kill a person, they go for it and crush anyone in their way. Some other people are found to have fine ideals for themselves and those they think of as their peers but no problem seeing other people as merely animate property. The moral, idealistic people in the book are the ones challenged on all levels even on levels they weren't aware of. When speaking of how she works to keep her family alive, Marmee (March's wife) says, “I had tried to bear the small insults and indignities of poverty, even to embrace, as he did, the virtues of a simple life. But where he might retire to his study and be wafted off on some contemplation of the Oversoul, it was I who felt harassed at every hour by our indebtedness and demeaned by begging credit here and there; I who had to go hungry so that he and the girls might eat. Oh, he gardened to put food on our table, and chopped wood for others when the larder was truly bare. And what praise he won for it: 'Orpheus at the plow,' Mr. Emerson hailed him. (No one thought to attach such a poetic label to me, though I might wear myself to a raveling with the hundred little shifts necessary to sustain us all.)”
Marmee ( which I always thought was some stupid way of saying Mommie but find is really the nickname for Margaret Marie) and March are shown to be very passionate people who share a philosophy of social justice and even renovate their homes to become a stop on the Underground Railway. Their friends are (Ralph) Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. They meet and become entangled with John Brown. Marmee has an explosive temper. There's a character modeled after Harriet Ann Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. There are scenes of medical carnage and neglect from Louisa Alcott's Hospital Sketches, there are battle scenes from the viewpoint of the grunts. A large part of the book is set on a leased farm in the South run by an ignorant Northerner where “contrabands”, slaves who escape or are freed by the war, are supposed to be paid for their work for the first time in their lives. A portion is set in Washington DC where stench filled muddy streets and crowded boarding houses are contrasted with elegant homes. In March practicality is contrasted with realism, ideals are contrasted with immorality, life is shown to be almost unbearably complex. This book and its imperfect characters filled my mind, and may even enable me to read Little Women without cringing.
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LibraryThing member kambrogi
I have heard conflicting reports on this Pulitzer Prize winner. It’s a literary spinoff – a contemporary novel that focuses on the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. The story opens on the Civil War battlefield and flashes back to the early life of this fictional father, his
Brooks has done her usual excellent research, and so gives us an accurate but fresh picture of various aspects of the Civil War period. She bases her portrait of March largely on Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, and fills in the picture with considerable investigation of the horrific non-battlefield aspects of the war in the south, as well as life in the middle-ground of Washington, DC, and the familiar New England world of Alcott/March’s home, peopled by real historical figures that he knew: Thoreau, Emerson, and John Brown. A fascinating read.
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youth as a farmer and then a peddler, his relationship with a black slave, his later marriage to Marmee and the birth of his four “little women.” He is a complex character, sometimes foolish, too idealistic or too cowardly, but ultimately fully human and sympathetic. In realistic but readable 19th century language, through both letters and narration, March’s account helps us understand his unusual, intelligent and self-willed wife, and a short section allows us into her thoughts, as well. Brooks has done her usual excellent research, and so gives us an accurate but fresh picture of various aspects of the Civil War period. She bases her portrait of March largely on Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, and fills in the picture with considerable investigation of the horrific non-battlefield aspects of the war in the south, as well as life in the middle-ground of Washington, DC, and the familiar New England world of Alcott/March’s home, peopled by real historical figures that he knew: Thoreau, Emerson, and John Brown. A fascinating read.
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LibraryThing member cmbohn
I just finished this one today and it took me forever! Like many girls, I read Little Women as a child and loved it. I read all the books in the series. So you might think a book about one of the characters would be very appealing to me. And so it might, but not this book.
Reverend March is always
Now naturally, a book mostly about the Civil War would not exactly be cheerful. But it wouldn't necessarily be depressing and feel like a chore to read. That's exactly how I felt reading this book. I know lots of people have said good things about it. But I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the central character all that much. I did feel that he was a moral man, trying to stand up for what he believes in a very complicated situation. But I didn't like him. And I was unhappy with the interpretation Brooks gives to the whole March household.
I'm not sure if I'll read any more by this author, but it sure wasn't what I expected and I'm glad to be done with it.
Reverend March is always
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the most obscure of the family in this series, as he is away at war when the book opens. So Geraldine Brooks has lots of room to imagine a new story for him. She opens the book with March in the middle of battle in the Civil War.Now naturally, a book mostly about the Civil War would not exactly be cheerful. But it wouldn't necessarily be depressing and feel like a chore to read. That's exactly how I felt reading this book. I know lots of people have said good things about it. But I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the central character all that much. I did feel that he was a moral man, trying to stand up for what he believes in a very complicated situation. But I didn't like him. And I was unhappy with the interpretation Brooks gives to the whole March household.
I'm not sure if I'll read any more by this author, but it sure wasn't what I expected and I'm glad to be done with it.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
Geraldine Brooks uses one of the beloved books of my childhood, [Little Women], to create a story of cruelty and death by focusing on the time the father of the March family spends as a chaplain in the Civil War. The Civil War was gruesome and painful and Brooks doesn't shy away from it. She also
I loved the idea of this book and the brief mentions of the March girls, but, really, the author went a little over the top with Mr. March. His notions of how to uphold his principles coupled with his cowardice were really annoying. It was an intentional move by the author, but it was hard to read. Apparently she based him on Bronson Alcott, Louisa Alcott's father. Lets hope she got it wrong for Louisa's sake.
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gives Marmee, the "too good to be true" mother of the March family, a temper and strained relationship with her husband. I liked that. I loved the idea of this book and the brief mentions of the March girls, but, really, the author went a little over the top with Mr. March. His notions of how to uphold his principles coupled with his cowardice were really annoying. It was an intentional move by the author, but it was hard to read. Apparently she based him on Bronson Alcott, Louisa Alcott's father. Lets hope she got it wrong for Louisa's sake.
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LibraryThing member streamsong
No wonder simple men have always had their gods dwell in the high places,. For as soon as a man lets his eye drop from the heavens to the horizon, he risks setting it on some scene of desolation.” p 4
This is the spin-off story of Robert March, the father of the four girls in the 1864 classic
In this Pulitzer Prize winning imagining of his life, Geraldine Brooks has created his backstory as well as given a fresh look at events surrounding the Civil War.
In many ways Ms Brooks patterned Robert March's life after that of Louisa May Alcott's own father, Bronson Alcott.
But March is also true to Alcott's vision of the husband and father in Little Women as Brooks depicts a philosopher more comfortable with the thoughts of his Transcendentalist friends than with deeds. Guided by his hopeful visions, March often jumps impulsively into events such as supporting John Brown's idealistic agrarian venture or impetuously joining the Union Army.
As in Little Women, the women in the book are the strong characters, the heroes who pick up the pieces.
Geraldine Brooks is married to a Civil War historian and did large amount of research on this era, giving what I felt was a fresh look at lesser known history. As always, I enjoy Geraldine Brooks' writing and ability to tell a tale. While some in my book club criticized the story as too far-fetched and coincidental, I give it a solid four stars.
This is the spin-off story of Robert March, the father of the four girls in the 1864 classic
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Little Women. In that book we see Mr March only as a shadow figure; we know he's a chaplain in the Civil War and eventually lies ill in a hospital. Not many details are given.In this Pulitzer Prize winning imagining of his life, Geraldine Brooks has created his backstory as well as given a fresh look at events surrounding the Civil War.
In many ways Ms Brooks patterned Robert March's life after that of Louisa May Alcott's own father, Bronson Alcott.
But March is also true to Alcott's vision of the husband and father in Little Women as Brooks depicts a philosopher more comfortable with the thoughts of his Transcendentalist friends than with deeds. Guided by his hopeful visions, March often jumps impulsively into events such as supporting John Brown's idealistic agrarian venture or impetuously joining the Union Army.
As in Little Women, the women in the book are the strong characters, the heroes who pick up the pieces.
Geraldine Brooks is married to a Civil War historian and did large amount of research on this era, giving what I felt was a fresh look at lesser known history. As always, I enjoy Geraldine Brooks' writing and ability to tell a tale. While some in my book club criticized the story as too far-fetched and coincidental, I give it a solid four stars.
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LibraryThing member bell7
Have you ever wondered what happened to Mr. March of Little Women while he was away at war? This story fills in that gap. In first-person narration and lovely prose, March tells his own story of being a Civil War chaplain in 1861. During a battle, he is unable to save one of his comrades while he
I have mixed feelings about this book. The writing was lovely and the research detailed, so I can see why it won a Pulitzer. I didn't entirely agree with the way the author reinterpreted the characters of Little Women, though I enjoyed the differing point of view and forcing myself to think of the characters in a new light. And though I can hardly fault the book for this, the harsh aspects of war and the effect it had on March's psyche left me feeling rather depressed; though the story is not devoid of hope, it is much sadder than I tend to like.
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makes his own escape. He finds himself at a plantation that he knew years ago from his days as a peddler, and remembers the plantation owner, Clement, and his slave, Grace, as they were twenty years ago. His heartbreaking descent from high-minded idealist to disillusioned soldier reads realistically. March finds himself unable to communicate the horrors of war to his wife, if only to try to keep her and his daughters from heartbreak.I have mixed feelings about this book. The writing was lovely and the research detailed, so I can see why it won a Pulitzer. I didn't entirely agree with the way the author reinterpreted the characters of Little Women, though I enjoyed the differing point of view and forcing myself to think of the characters in a new light. And though I can hardly fault the book for this, the harsh aspects of war and the effect it had on March's psyche left me feeling rather depressed; though the story is not devoid of hope, it is much sadder than I tend to like.
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LibraryThing member HunyBadger
I expected to like this since I'm a big fan of Little Women and the whole series of books by Alcott. However, through most of the book I found the main character distasteful: full of pride, ego and hidden selfishness. His lack of direction was annoying and his motivations blinded. I wondered why
As I neared the end though, I realized that Mr March had truly become a "real" character, just as flawed as a human (not just a one dimensional character on a page). Geraldine Brooks masterly made me fully believe in the character. As I finished, I still found him distasteful but I saw how she had convinced me of the "realness" of his actions and thoughts. It happened so surreptitiously, so quietly that I wasn't even aware of it until reflecting on the book later. This is quite a talent.
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this author had won a Pultizer.As I neared the end though, I realized that Mr March had truly become a "real" character, just as flawed as a human (not just a one dimensional character on a page). Geraldine Brooks masterly made me fully believe in the character. As I finished, I still found him distasteful but I saw how she had convinced me of the "realness" of his actions and thoughts. It happened so surreptitiously, so quietly that I wasn't even aware of it until reflecting on the book later. This is quite a talent.
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LibraryThing member writestuff
In Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, one character - Mr. March - is absent and only exists in the reader's imagination. Geraldine Brooks re-imagines this character within the pages of March. Part history and part love story, this novel is a carefully wrought tale of one man's journey through
The novel is told primarily through the voice of Mr. March, sometimes through his letters home to his wife and daughters, sometimes through flashbacks. But the most powerful sections of the story are the portrayals of violence and loss.
The echoes of Mr. March's experiences continue to resonate beyond the battlefield, infiltrating his marriage and idealistic view of the world. With gripping descriptions, Brooks creates a compelling story which is hard to put down. This Pulitzer prize winning novel leaves the reader with questions such as: How do the realities of war and loss unhinge a man's ideals? And can we ever be the same after such a life changing experience?
The narrative tension and fine story development of March sticks with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
Recommended.
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America's most devastating war.The novel is told primarily through the voice of Mr. March, sometimes through his letters home to his wife and daughters, sometimes through flashbacks. But the most powerful sections of the story are the portrayals of violence and loss.
The echoes of Mr. March's experiences continue to resonate beyond the battlefield, infiltrating his marriage and idealistic view of the world. With gripping descriptions, Brooks creates a compelling story which is hard to put down. This Pulitzer prize winning novel leaves the reader with questions such as: How do the realities of war and loss unhinge a man's ideals? And can we ever be the same after such a life changing experience?
The narrative tension and fine story development of March sticks with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
Recommended.
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LibraryThing member ptaylor12
This book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but I didn't care for it much. It's the story of Mr. March, father of Alcott's Little Women. If my book club hadn't been reading it, I probably wouldn't have finished it. Away from his family, March finds racism and brutality as he serves as an army
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chaplain. His idealism is shaken. Brooks based the character on Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father, and a person I've always pretty much despised because he expected his richer friends to support him and his family. I'll stop here. Failure to accept responsibility for one's family can bring on a major rant. Show Less
LibraryThing member TimBazzett
I have never read LITTLE WOMEN in its entirety, but have read parts of it, and found it just a bit too much on the 'sweet' side for my reading taste. I have viewed a couple of the film adaptations of the book though and thought both of them very entertaining.
Geraldine Brooks's novel, MARCH, is of
"You cannot right injustice by injustice. You must not defame God by preaching that he wills young men to kill one another. For what manner of God could possibly will [this] ...?"
What kind of God indeed? Or 'Allah' whose name is so often invoked in the jihads currently going on throughout the middle East? Brooks's well-researched look at the awful price of our own Civil War resonates with truth and authenticity even today.
The way the author weaves in real historical people and events is most effective, and she does this immediately, as her narrative opens with the October of 1861's Battle of Ball's Bluff in Virginia and the awful human toll it took. And in looking at the March family's life in Concord before the war, she shows them as friends and intimates of Emerson and Thoreau and supporters of the fiery abolitionist John Brown. Hawthorne gives an address in one scene and the Marches read UNCLE TOM'S CABIN to their girls.
Geraldine Brooks is an extremely talented writer and on top of her game in the arena of historical fiction. (I read her YEAR OF WONDERS a few years back and it too was very good.) MARCH is, quite simply, a very good story which mixes in real history in a most exemplary fashion.
Geraldine Brooks's novel, MARCH, is of
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course a fictional look at the absent father from LITTLE WOMEN, the daddy who went off to war, the US Civil war in this case. Brooks chooses to use the same sort of genteel style that Alcott's 19th century classic employed, and, while it works to good effect and is certainly appropriate, it was still for me a bit off-putting. Nevertheless, this is a well-told and engrossing story of one man with high principles and ideals who goes off to war and is severely tested, and perhaps even irreparably broken in the end by bearing witness to the casual butchery and barbarity of battles and guerilla actions. In an Afterword, Brooks says that she was writing MARCH against the contemporary backdrop of the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan too, I presume). But even before I'd read this admission by Brooks, I was struck by this line in the novel -"You cannot right injustice by injustice. You must not defame God by preaching that he wills young men to kill one another. For what manner of God could possibly will [this] ...?"
What kind of God indeed? Or 'Allah' whose name is so often invoked in the jihads currently going on throughout the middle East? Brooks's well-researched look at the awful price of our own Civil War resonates with truth and authenticity even today.
The way the author weaves in real historical people and events is most effective, and she does this immediately, as her narrative opens with the October of 1861's Battle of Ball's Bluff in Virginia and the awful human toll it took. And in looking at the March family's life in Concord before the war, she shows them as friends and intimates of Emerson and Thoreau and supporters of the fiery abolitionist John Brown. Hawthorne gives an address in one scene and the Marches read UNCLE TOM'S CABIN to their girls.
Geraldine Brooks is an extremely talented writer and on top of her game in the arena of historical fiction. (I read her YEAR OF WONDERS a few years back and it too was very good.) MARCH is, quite simply, a very good story which mixes in real history in a most exemplary fashion.
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LibraryThing member avilas
To qualify, I did not finish this book. Hoping that this novel would form the perfect marriage of modern Pulitzer and commentary on classic literature (see "The Wide Sargasso Sea"), I instead found a mediocre historical fiction that disregarded the original novel. First, the character of Mr. March
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is inaccurate to the March of the novel. He's based on Alcott's father, but it is widely believed that Alcott's Mr. March is actually a counter to her real father. The March family Unitarians? Laughable. Transcendental? Despite the most recent film adaptation: absurd. When Mr. March and Marmee joined a dinner party of Thoreau and Emerson, I put the book down. Instead of interpreting the male side of the original story, Brooks attempts to explain away the heart of the March family for modern readers. Because I hope to read the classic again some day, and likely to any children I may have, I chose to sacrifice finishing "March" to maintain the purity of the original. If you think, however, that I am wrong and ought to give this book a second chance, please let me know. :) Show Less
LibraryThing member GennaC
Brooks’ novel re-imagines the absent Mr. March of classic children’s novel Little Women through an invented foray as a Civil War Union chaplain, a teacher of freed slaves in the war-torn South, and an unabashed idealist of the abolitionist cause. Rife with haunting imagery of Civil War
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battlefields and field hospitals steeped with death and despair, March follows a man’s unwavering yet immobilizing desire to contribute to the North’s cause at the expense of his family’s well-being and his own life. A unique perspective on the challenges of marriages and families physically and emotionally torn apart by war, Brooks’ painstakingly researched and powerfully imagined story is both affecting and quietly hopeful. Show Less
LibraryThing member njmom3
My book club selected this book, and I started to read it. However, I love love love Little Women and decided that I did not want the somber reality of March to cloud my thoughts about Little Women. Very serious and somber. Perhaps realistic but too much so for me.
LibraryThing member maryreinert
I realize that a fair amount of liberty has been taken with the historical accuracy of the times, but the sense that this period in our history was sad and "messy" comes through clearly, and is, in my opinion, a truthful rendering. The characters of Concord such as Thoreau and Emerson and March's
A reader certainly doesn't have to be a fan or, or have even read Little Women. This stands on its on.
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wife, Marmee, provided an interesting look at the passion of the abolitionists. Marmee's reaction to the freed Blacks in Washington DC and especially her impression of Grace prove that it is much easier to love an idea rather than people. Mr. March is a weak character, but it's a rare individual who can always do the right thing when trapped in time of war with all its fear and suffering.A reader certainly doesn't have to be a fan or, or have even read Little Women. This stands on its on.
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LibraryThing member Jemima79
Geraldine Brooks has written such a full and rich story in so small a book. I almost put it down after reading the first few pages because the writing was so descriptive that I felt as if I was amongst the wounded soldiers in the civil war (and I am very squeamish). I am glad that I pressed on
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though because the book was unique and enlightening. It tells the imagined story of Mr March of Alcott's Little Women. It is by no means an imitation of Alcott's style or content though. Brooks story is tragic, intense and 'real' in it's portrayal of the human condition. "March" examines the morality of the intellect alongside the passions and failings of human nature Show Less
LibraryThing member gwendolyndawson
The story of Mr. March, of the family of Little Women (Louisa May Alcott). At times very compelling and much edgier than expected. In the end, however, I didn't like Mr. March much--he seems weak of character.
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