As much as I have a deep love for historical fiction, this particular book was, unfortunately, not a triumph for me. It was one that I was truly eager to read for my book club, but alas, it left me with an overwhelming sense of disappointment. Currently, I am also engrossed in reading "I Capture the Castle," and I firmly believe that it is a far superior historical fiction novel. I had heard a wide range of opinions regarding this book - some individuals adored it with all their hearts, while others despised it. After finally reading it, I can understand why the opinions are so inconsistent.

This book had an interesting concept. "Little Women" is one of my favorite books from my childhood (although "Anne of Green Gables" will forever hold the top spot in my heart!). It is filled with so much nostalgia for me. With "March," Geraldine Brooks tells the story of the absent father from "Little Women." So, essentially, this is a form of fanfiction (which is perfectly fine, as I have enjoyed my fair share of fanfic!). However, it almost seems to mar the beauty of "Little Women." The contrast between this and "Little Women" is indeed intriguing. I am all in favor of darker, grittier spin-offs. But this one, at least in my opinion, was not that. I can imagine that there are people who feel as if this is a form of character assassination. I guess I wonder why Brooks did not write a novel specifically about Bronson Alcott, since in the Afterword she mentions that this is who she mostly bases Mr. March on? To me, that would have made much more sense.

I absolutely detested Mr. March. He was such a smug bastard. I don't necessarily have to like a character to become fully immersed in a book. In fact, I have been known to despise a character and yet still fall in love with the story. But that was not the case here. March is a whiny, naive, self-righteous adulterer and a complete bore.

Don't get me wrong, Brooks can write beautifully. But I felt like this book really missed the mark at times. Books like this are precisely why I rarely pay attention to what wins awards, because just because a book wins a Pulitzer does not mean that the story is automatically a wonderful one.

I do still plan on exploring more books by Geraldine Brooks. In fact, I just obtained "People of the Book" a few weeks ago. I do think Brooks has a certain way with words, but this particular story simply did not resonate with me. I am torn, because the story itself would receive a one-star rating from me, but the writing was quite lovely. So, I think I will be generous and bump it up to a two-star rating.

This was an absolutely fabulous read.

I discovered that it was even more moving and better written than The Known World, which deals with a similar subject matter. March and his quixotic battle against slavery and madness during the Civil War are truly compelling and beautiful. Geraldine Brooks' writing is simply astounding. It kept me turning the pages incessantly because I had an intense need to know what was going to happen next.

Although the characters were inspired by Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, the story that Brooks tells is gruesome and heartbreaking. It is not dissimilar to Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa in its unqualified condemnation of the institution of slavery and the horrors that man is capable of inflicting on his fellow humans in the delusion of feelings of superiority in terms of race - and this holds true on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line (one can refer to Pychon's magnificent Mason&Dixon to understand how the line was initially drawn).

I can only applaud teary-eyed the Pulitzer that Brooks won after penning this stunning and thought-provoking novel. I truly want to read more works from this incredibly talented writer.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006, this remarkable work of fiction truly deserves all the acclaim it receives.

Many reviewers and readers often like to discuss its connection with Alcott's Little Women. However, while there is indeed a connection, it in no way defines what this novel is truly about. This book stands proudly on its own merit, independent of any help from its famous connection.

Other than the name and a few references to the little women at home, it has virtually no resemblance to Alcott's work, although Mrs. March is included throughout.

This story is centered around Mr. March, the husband and father of the famous family. His pursuit of self-perfection leads him to join the Union army as a chaplain and contribute to the cause of freeing the slaves. This was a cause dear to the March family as they had used their home as a stopover on the underground railroad.

Mr. March's experiences during his year of service completely change his views. What he once saw as a glorified cause turns into the harsh reality that one person, no matter what they do, can never do enough to stop the tragic and inhumane treatment of an entire race of people. The events of the year and his personal failings along the way leave him broken and ashamed, with little hope of recovery.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone. It truly is a modern classic that offers deep insights into human nature and the complex issues of society.

Se lo considero un libro che ha come protagonista il padre delle Piccole Donne - cosa che effettivamente è - ho due cose da dire.

Prima cosa: dovevamo proprio metterci in mezzo una seconda donna? A me questa cosa sta antipatica. La famiglia March in Piccole donne è adorabile e a me quel libro ha scaldato il cuore tutte le innumerevoli volte che mi è capitato di leggerlo. L’ambiente familiare di quel romanzo è avvolto da una luce dorata che fa risplendere ogni cosa. Dovevamo proprio leggerci di questa mezza tresca? Era davvero necessario? La me lettrice affezionata a quel libro e a quei personaggi ha abbastanza mal digerito questa scelta dell’autrice. È come se mi avesse rovinato non solo quel ricordo, ma anche le eventuali future riletture. Perché se dovessi rileggere Piccole donne per me sarà inevitabile ripensare a questo non trascurabile dettaglio e ne sarò parecchio amareggiata.

Seconda cosa: la mia memoria potrebbe ingannarmi, ma a me non è mai sembrato che in Piccole donne ci fossero riferimenti alla Ferrovia sotterranea. Nel momento in cui non ti limiti a parlare del signor March come un’entità a sé, ma mi vieni a dire che anche la famiglia March, con le figlie, ospitava fuggitivi, li nascondeva, per farli procedere poi con il viaggio, mi aspetto che in Piccole donne almeno un riferimento del genere ci sia. Ma non c’è (o io non me lo ricordo, in questo caso ritiro tutto). La cosa quindi mi diventa poco plausibile. Soprattutto se nel tuo romanzo ci metti dentro scene raccontate nel libro di Alcott.

Diciamo quindi che aver letto (più volte) Piccole donne e averlo amato, ha fatto sì che facessi un esame più scrupoloso a questo romanzo.

Se invece lo considerassi come un libro a sé, come se non avesse nessun legame con Piccole donne, probabilmente direi che è un romanzo come tanti che parla della schiavitù. E con questo non voglio sminuire la schiavitù, ma intendo dire che ci sono romanzi sul tema che ho apprezzato molto di più.

This is the captivating story of Peter March, the absent father of Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth from the beloved "Little Women."

Clever, poignant, and filled with valuable information, Brooks takes Louisa May Alcott's renowned work and crafts a parallel narrative about their father's experiences during the same year.

Little snippets from "Little Women" are incorporated, making it仿佛 you can envision that famous play unfolding in the background of each scene. It's similar to "Wicked" and "The Wizard of Oz," yet more serious and significant. After all, Peter March wasn't off flying on a broom; he was striving to serve the Union troops in the United States Civil War.

Brooks bases Peter on Alcott's own father's journals, just as Alcott based her "Little Women" on herself and her sisters. Bronson Alcott, and his fictional counterpart, Peter March, are part of the intellectual elite residing in Concord, Massachusetts, alongside their contemporaries like Walden, Thoreau, Hawthorn, and Brown, who all make appearances in the story.

Idealistic abolitionists with Quaker leanings, March leaves his family to support the Union's cause to end slavery and encounters great conflict between his inner values and his outward actions.

Brooks writes exclusively in the first person, allowing the reader, like me, to understand Peter March as he truly is, as he aspires to be, and as he falls short. He is a remarkable character.

My only gripe with the book is that Brooks abandons Peter for a few chapters and writes from the perspective of his wife, Marmee, when he lies sick with fever. However, she eventually returns to Peter's voice, providing the story with the resolution it requires.

While Marmee's thoughts are equally moving and necessary, it does make the ending a bit choppy.

Despite this lack of continuity, I wholeheartedly recommend "March." It will compel you to reexamine your own viewpoints on war, education, race, marriage, courage, pride, and love.

It feels as if an eternity has passed since I've read such a remarkable novel. Geraldine Brooks has an uncanny ability to capture the horror of war with just a few words: “…[men] were clinging [to the rocky bluff over the river] as a cluster of bees dangling from a hive, and slipping off in clumps, four or five together.”

Her characters are vividly portrayed and immersed in a historically accurate language, transporting us to another time and making us eager to conduct our own research.

In this novel, she reconstructs the world of one of our most cherished and earliest American writers, Louisa May Alcott. Instead of treading on familiar ground, she delves back in time to imagine Alcott's father, using his journals, those of his friends, and the accounts of Civil War chaplains, soldiers, medics, and slaves. She has chosen an extraordinary man and made him gracious, empathetic, flawed, generous, and loving. This is crucial for guiding us through the bitter days of war, as we need someone who is willing to reflect on the events of that era and lead us.

He was sincere, yet must have been painfully strict with his family:

…I had come in stages to a different belief about how one should be in this life. I now felt convinced that the greater part of a man’s duty consists in abstaining from much that he is in the habit of consuming…None in our household ate meat but now we learned to do without milk and cheese also, for why should the calf be deprived of its mother’s milk? Further, we found that by limiting our own consumption to two meals a day, we were able to set aside a basket of provisions from which the girls were able to exact a pleasure far greater than sating an animal appetite. Once a week they carried the fruits of their sacrifice as a gift to a destitute brood of German immigrants.

I couldn't help but laugh when I read this, as the father's sincerity must surely have been a source of disappointment for his daughters.

Part I is told from the perspective of Captain March, the chaplain of the Union Army. Although we discover the deepest secrets hidden in his heart, we never learn his first name. Part II is narrated by his wife, Marmee March née Day of Concord, Massachusetts. The contrast between the two voices once again reminds us that the gestures between husband and wife are often misinterpreted, and that if we want our union to succeed, we should strive to express our meaning and intentions clearly.

“Ragged scallop of cypress woods”, Jo's “lawless strands” [of hair], “a cold drizzle [falling] from heavily swagged clouds”: these phrases add a rich flavor and vivid color to the book, and they are all Brooks' creations. It is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction, but what I loved most was her smooth and seamless storytelling, with its backward glances, nineteenth-century cadence and language, use of metaphor, rich imaginings, and solid grounding in historical fact. We can be grateful to her for reminding us of our history and for remembering those men and women who left records of their lives and of our most brutal war.

For those considering the audio version, the narration by Richard Easton is outstanding. His fluent expression and elegant tone mirror the beauty of the text.

The best Civil War novel I’ve read. The best slavery novel I’ve read. One of the best historical novels I’ve ever read, period. Brooks’s second novel uses \\n  Little Women\\n as its jumping-off point, but is very much its own story.

Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, was too prickly to come across well in a fictional guise (as her other family members did in Little Women). So, it’s little wonder that she decided he would be a background figure in that novel. The Alcott family patriarch was an eccentric idealist. His endeavors, like the doomed Fruitlands utopian community, often failed. Many dismissed him as a religious fanatic, and his vegan diet was considered beyond the pale at that time. Brooks relied on Bronson Alcott’s journals and letters in creating Mr. March’s voice. She has succeeded in adding nuance to an often unfairly maligned personality.

The book opens with March, a thirty-nine-year-old Civil War chaplain. He is stationed in Norfolk, Virginia and writing a letter to his wife and four daughters. The image of the placid family home quickly fades. We see a vulture eating a man’s entrails and another soldier drowning in a river. The beleaguered March soon finds himself in a familiar building. The field hospital where he goes to assist with blood-spurting amputations was once a mansion where he plied his trade as an eighteen-year-old peddler. Before being hastily ejected for trying to teach a Negro child to read, he fell in love with Grace, a dignified, intelligent slave.

Although most chapters open with his missives home, this domestic link becomes increasingly strained. March continues on a solitary odyssey he doubts his all-female family could ever understand. “Imagining the four beloved heads, sleeping peacefully on their pillows in Concord” is increasingly difficult. “Truth recedes with every word I set down.” Through flashbacks, we learn how he met Marmee. We see him spend time in the company of their Massachusetts neighbors, Henry David Thoreau and the Emersons. We also hear about their abolitionist ventures: housing an Underground Railroad station and giving financial support to John Brown’s ill-fated plans. In the 50 pages when March is incapacitated by fever, we see the reeking swamp that was 1860s Washington, D.C. and the “inconstant, ruined dreamer” that was March/Bronson Alcott through Marmee’s eyes. The whole is a perfect mixture of what’s familiar from history and literature and what Brooks has imagined. Stellar stuff.

(See also my Literary Hub article on rereading Little Women in its 150th anniversary year and watching the new BBC/PBS miniseries adaptation.)

Video to come on this soon, discussing it in conversation with Little Women.

We are really excited about the upcoming video. It will feature an in-depth conversation with the beloved characters from Little Women.

This video is going to be a treat for all the fans of the classic novel. We will explore various aspects of the story, such as the relationships between the sisters, their dreams and aspirations, and the challenges they face.

The conversation will be engaging and thought-provoking, as we get to hear the perspectives of the characters themselves.

Stay tuned for the video, which will be coming out very soon. We can't wait to share this wonderful experience with you!

Overall, I have a favorable impression of "March" by Geraldine Brooks. It is truly a remarkable achievement for her to incorporate a classic novel into the context of the Civil War.

A Nice Version

This approach not only offers a unique perspective but also provides valuable insights into the hardships endured by the black community in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. As someone with a keen interest in the Civil War and having read extensively about reconstruction, I found this aspect particularly engaging.

However, I do feel that Brooks perhaps presented the struggles of the black community with a somewhat light touch. While certain elements, such as the lack of payment, are depicted clearly, there are other parts that seem to emphasize a sense of happiness within the community rather than the harsh reality of disappointment.

I also wish that Marmie had served as the narrator throughout the entire book. I was particularly impressed by her vivid descriptions, which I believed were the strongest aspect of the story.

Overall, I consider "March" to be a good book. Although I continue to have difficulty connecting with Pulitzer Prize-winning works, I will persevere in my reading as it helps me to broaden my literary horizons.

I recommend this book with a degree of enthusiasm, albeit not overly exuberant.

I wasn't sure about this one initially. I've read 3 books by this author. I loved one, thought one was OK, and loved the other until about 90% of the way through the book, but the final 10% was incredibly disappointing. So, I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this. Especially since it was giving us a different perspective on Mr March, the father of Louisa May Alcott's Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. In the little we see of him in Little Women, he seems such a godly and dependable man. I wasn't sure whether I could trust Geraldine Brooks in her rendering of him, but I still wanted to see what it was like.

In the end, I thought she did fairly well. There were some aspects I was a little disappointed with, but on the whole, I liked it. I also wasn't sure about the setting of the Civil War, as it's not a period of history in which I am greatly interested. However, that was also portrayed in an interesting manner, even for someone with little interest in it.

Most of the book is narrated by Mr March, but my favourite part was toward the end, when the narrator switched from Mr March to Mrs March. At the time when he was gravely ill and she made her way to visit him at the hospital where he was to care for him. This gave another perspective to both their characters, and I felt Brooks' rendering of Mrs March was better than that of Mr March.

But generally, it was an enjoyable read - 3.5 stars.

Idealism And The Civil War

Geraldine Brooks's novel "March" presents a complex and vivid picture of the Civil War. It combines the heroic and the cowardly, the idealistic and the base. This novel reminds us why the Civil War continues to fascinate many Americans.

The story is about March, a 39-year-old minister with unorthodox religious views, an idealist, and an abolitionist. He has lost his wealth supporting John Brown and is a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. The other main characters are Marmee, his strong-willed wife, and Grace, a former slave. March met Grace when he was 18 and saw her whipped for teaching other slaves to read.

The book follows March's war experiences and his early life through flashbacks. It shows how his idealism is tested by combat and the enormity of the war. It also shows the strain on his family relationships, especially with Marmee and Grace. The descriptions of the intellectual milieu of early Concord, especially of Thoreau, are excellent.

Even though March is 39, his idealism makes him enlist in the war. He witnesses the evil and slaughter in battles like Ball's Bluff. He is then transferred to teach freed slaves at Oak Landing. After an encounter with Confederate irregulars, he becomes ill and Marmee is called to the hospital. Grace, now a Union nurse, helps him recover. Eventually, he returns home to face an uncertain future.

Walt Whitman said that the real Civil War will never get into the books. But many Americans still try to understand it through history and literature. Brooks's novel seems like a good start for readers to approach and think about the Civil War. It is thoughtful about the broad issues of the war and its effect on individuals and families.

Robin Friedman

Well written, this is an excellent book that delves deep into the tolls, misery, and injustice of the Civil War.

However, it was a bit too lugubrious for my taste, which is why I marked it down a star. The main character, Peter March, is a well-meaning vegetarian. In those days, being a vegetarian was no easy feat as there weren't many whole food stores. At the age of 39, Peter is striving to do good things for the abolitionist movement of the time. But the system is so dreadful, so narrow-minded and cruel, that almost all of his efforts end in disaster. Many of his attempts are thwarted, and some even lead to death.

Sadly, some of this mindset still persists today.

If you're seeking a light and fluffy read, something filled with laughter and redemption, this book is not for you. Nevertheless, I can understand why it won the Pulitzer in 2006. It offers a profound and thought-provoking exploration of a dark period in American history.