MY FOREVER DRUG !

I prefer sitting all snug and warm with my hot-coffee mug and reading through the adventures of the adorable March family.

March family is like a bower of evergreen prolific climbers (with a never give-up attitude), bearing four idiosyncratic perennial flowers (the March Sisters), each having a distinct fragrance of their own.

Anyone can be easily beguiled by their charm, I am smitten ! (esp. Jo). Each has idiosyncratic talents and characteristics. Love for the family keeps them bonded.

One can find shelter in this bower anytime to relax and rejuvenate.

Unambiguously, it is saccharine, endearing, professing principles of Christianity, oozing out tons of gratefulness, solidarity, respect and above all heart-touching sisterhood (for someone like me without siblings, March sisters helped me to live this experience virtually!)

Whenever the 4 March Sisters - Jo, Beth, Amy, Meg called out their mother as "Marmee", I was engulfed with heart-wrenching emotions. Marmee afterall !

The girls aren't complaint boxes about any resistances in life but steer through all the predicaments with a cheerful disposition and childlike spirit.

The novel begins with the sisters sitting crestfallen, pondering about their circumstances, yet aiming to brighten up their Christmas. Planning to buy gifts for each other, which finally narrows down to buying for their Marmee, this novel is all about sharing and living lovingly.

Mr. Laurence, their neighbor invites the girls for the New Year's Party, where Jo ( my fav. character, afterall she is in love with books) meets Laurie (another fav of mine , high-spirited and mischievous in company of the March sisters) who ends up falling in love with one of the sisters (leaving it to the audience to discover). There is so much more to this novel, can't capture the superfluous information in a small review.

The sisters traverse through various adventures and vicissitudes of life with calmness and dignity. Best part of the plot is that none of the sisters is supercilious.

The novel ends on a happy note, where everyone is busy counting their blessings.

Warning - This book is infused with a heavy dose of morality.

Little Woman is a book that I have read again and again, since I was a child and every time it seems a little new. The story is about four sisters with human faults. They try to do what is right, fail, and keep at it as they are all strong and independent. The pages of this book are full of honesty, love, kindness, and tolerance pervade.
I can only give one recommendation: just start the book, it will be finished automatically.

This is a classic that has never appealed from the title, cover and few reviews I have read of it over the years. A story a year in the lives of the four March sisters, the oldest being 16 and the youngest being 12 told in a style. A bildungsroman loosely based on the lives of the writer and her three sisters with numerous nods to and references to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The work is seen as more or less the seminal Young Adult book as being pretty much the first to merge sentimental and romantic themes into a work for children. It was a roaring commercial and critical success from the off!

On completing this book I read a number of online reviews and was not surprised to find out that it is generally accepted that this depicts an idealised version of Alcott's youth and is actually seen as one of the core roots of the idea of an 'all-American girl'. The book does have an almost fairy tale like feel, but the writer still manages to build some impressive characterisations as well as lots of pulling of heartstrings. In the context of when it was written, it's overall pleasing message which although likening domesticity and the search for true love as core goals for young women , also has surprisingly strong pro-woman themes set around the strength of the mother and sense of the power and importance of female/sister kinship it's well worth the 7 out of 12, Three Stars I give it :)

2022 read

I’ve been meaning to read this since January of this year, so it only makes sense that I’ve finally read it by *checks calendar* the end of October. I actually finished Little Women several days ago, but have been putting off finally writing the review for it because I was so massively disappointed.

Obviously as a book published in 1868-1869 (was originally two volumes), there’s going to be exhaustive literary analysis going back a century and a half. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been said a hundred times over but OH WELL that’s really never stopped me before! In all seriousness, I intended on giving this book a thoughtful critique and trying to take into account the time this was written and how it was probably even considered transgressive then and blah blah blah, whatever. But by the end I was so pissed with the direction Alcott was going that I knew this was just going to be a huge rant-y, mostly unproductive review, which is more about venting than informing potential readers. Sorry y’all, this ones for me!!!!

Everything after this point is going to be a huge spoiler, so only read on if you’ve read the book, seen one of the movies or just don’t care.


I’ll start with Meg because she’s the oldest and was the first to be totally dropped by the story. Seriously, Meg started off as independent and smart, but is tossed aside like a used rag as soon as she gets married. After Meg had inexplicably agreed to marry her trash husband John Brooke, the only time the author decides to check in on her is to see how not perfect of a wife she’s being. John, who is useless and proud, one of the worst combinations, all but abandons his new wife because she’s ‘always busy caring for their children’ and not the hot young wife he married. These are his actual reasons for staying out all night and ignoring her. And to add insult to injury, one of his worst enablers is Meg’s own mother.

This becomes a theme in the book, where one of the girls usually rightfully points out things that are unfair or ridiculous to expect of women, only to be subjected to a Marmie Lecture® about why, actually, it’s good to be miserable all the time. Marmie’s speech this time went something like, “Ah, I too use to want to take care of my children (you), but then my husband (your father) got grumpy and I saw it was actually all my fault!” See how that works! You can not simply expect your husband to help out, you actually should just feel lucky he wants you at all anymore because you’re 22 and basically decrepit!!

But anyways, on to Beth! The most likable because she has no personality. I’m not being mean, that’s literally a theme of the book, except Alcott calls it being “agreeable”. I never want to hear that word again. It’s just code for ‘do not give any indication you have any opinion whatsoever’, basically going along with whatever the man in the room says. This rule has made such a strong impression on Beth that she is genuinely afraid of anyone not a blood relative to her and she tries to physically hide herself whenever a stranger is present.

The elephant in the room with Beth is that she famously dies near the end. The sickness came early on in the book and made a feeble girl practically invalid for the rest of the story. The character of Beth is based on Alcott’s sister, Lizzie, who died at 23. And though I’m sure it was comforting for the author to try to ascribe meaning to a beloved sibling who died so young, narratively, I really hated what she did with Beth’s character. It felt like as soon as Beth might start showing interests and goals outside of being ‘the quiet one’, that her agency was stripped away from her. I’m sorry, no teenage girl is actually ‘happy’ she’s dying young because she couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do when she grew up. That’s clearly an author’s issue in not being able to imagine Beth beyond the flimsy character development she’s had so far. It’s a way to make both writer and reader more comfortable with the death of a young girl, and I’m not here for it.

I’m going to do Amy and Jo together, because they felt like they were written mostly as foils for each other. Amy is prim and Jo is messy. Jo acts like a tomboy and Amy is a girly-girl. Amy follows the rules and Jo likes to break them. I didn’t mind this characterization, but it was interesting to see them clash and figure out who they were when they were apart from one another.

What I disliked the most about them was the romantic direction Alcott took with them. We could see the budding relationship between Laurie and Jo, and it came as no surprise when he proposed. I wasn’t surprised when she said no, either, in fact I actually really liked that choice for her. She’s fiercely independent and has shown no interest in any form of ‘settling down’, so no, I don’t think she should have ended up with Laurie. But oh my god Amy?????? Her and Laurie make even LESS sense together than him and Jo!!!!! He literally says “when he couldn’t have one sister he took the other, and was happy” WHAT

Is Amy not allowed to have her own romance? Her own dreams? Must she get everything second-hand from her sisters—even a husband?!? Amy from the first half of the book would NEVER have married Laurie, she wouldn’t dream of it!! Which brings me to the second most disappointing pairing of the book: Jo and whatever his name.

There’s just no reason for this. She never wanted a husband, but if she did for whatever reason, WHY would she pick this middle-aged German man she knew for a few months over a boy her age who she’s been best friends with her entire life??? She wouldn’t, it makes no sense. And he’s not supportive of her! He literally shames her out of writing for money because he morally objects to some ‘popular’ stories that appear in papers. Ohhhh noooooo, not a story someone enjoys reading, THE HORROR!!! He lectures her at every opportunity, is twice her age, is ugly, poor and takes advantage of his position as her teacher to make a move on her. He’s gross, I hate him.

As a coming of age story, this was terrible. I could not think of a worse moral for young women to pull from a book then ‘you cease to matter as an individual as soon as you’re married’, which is my assumption of what Alcott was going for. If you want to be entirely turned off the idea of marriage, I would recommend Little Women. Or maybe just read Part 1, which is superior in every way. If I average the star rating of the first part with the second, I guess that averages to three stars, which is the nicest I can do for this “classic”.

Sorry Louisa May, it’s not for me.

that feeling when you spend the majority of the book desperately longing to be a jo, but then end up realising youre actually just a beth… :/

also, the fact that i still like laurie, even after he messes around in france trying to “find himself,” says a lot more about me than it does about him, to be fair.

and dont even get me started on the new film coming out. the casting definitely has me feeling some kind of way. im still not over the precision of timothée chalamet as laurie, the literary character who embodies so many young peoples first experience with f-boi heartbreak. i mean, will you just LOOK at my son!?

n  n

jo + laurie 4 ever, amirite ladies?!

↠ 3.5 stars

First Re-Read of 2019

Well, my hardcover edition of this American "classic" written 151 years ago was first read by me when I was 13 years old( such a great age as I read so many great books that year). One of the Goodreads groups I belong to decided to read this as our February 2019 selection and I managed to smuggle this one admidst all my February/March ARCS.

* SPOILERS AHEAD*

As an adult reader, I find myself thinking back to what I thought that very first initial read. First, I was Jo March + Theodore " Laurie" Laurence= Relationship goals. I couldn't believe that she ended up with a 40 year old man with a beard!! But it's 2019, I am a Canadian girl that gets weak in the knees at the mere sight ofa man with a beard and a nice plaid shirt. I totally see all the reasons that it wouldn't have worked between Jo and Laurie. Second, I hated Amy March with a passion when I was a kid( Kristen Dunst did make me feel a bit of empathy for the character in the 1994 film), but now as an adult I actually enjoyed the character. It's eldest sister, Meg, that I find a bit insufferable now. Especially after she and John Brooke get married, just one eyeroll after the other.

The only characters that I still feel a great love for are Marmee and fragile Beth. Although with a little bit of reluctance, I do have to concur with my fellow readers that they were perhaps a tad too perfect. Who knew there could ever be such a thing?

Still a 5 star read after all these years though!

Little Women is a period drama centered around the lives of four young women during the Civil War where they learn their ways towards sisterhood, resilience, and the pursuit of dreams. This book was set during the Civil War, and the novel follows the lives of the four March sisters: Amy, Jo, Beth, and Meg, as they navigate the challenges of growing up, finding love, and pursuing their dreams. The author really captivates the character development and characteristics, really drawing the reader into the sisters’ lives, making the reader have an emotional connection with the sisters. Through their trials and triumphs, the March sisters inspire readers with their strength, compassion, sisterly love, family, and the pursuit of individuality. If you are interested in period dramas, coming of age stories, and sisterhood, then Little Women is the perfect book for you! -Sara K. (Teen Volunteer)

Yes, yes. I AM a grown-ass man reading this, but I'm not even remotely ashamed.

What I tried to do here was dispel the extra melodrama & embrace the cut-outs (fat trimmed out) of the Winona Ryder film. I was on the hunt for all the "new" (ha!) stuff that the regular person, well informed of the plot involving four young girls growing up (or in the case of Beth, not) never even knew existed. But it seems that the film did a great job not adding many more scenes than direly needed (like the Byrne-Ryder night at the opera scene-- it explains why she doesn't choose Laurie after all) nor taking indispensable scenes from the century-&-a-half old novel to the cutting room floor. Alas, there's a good reason why Entertainment Weekly once decreed that the film was a great comfort to all post-911 victims--a holistic healing to the nation as a whole. The story has no great battles to speak of... no violence, no terrible disasters. The minutiae is symbolic of fragile domestic existences... important & very fun to read about--this coming from a Bridget and Carrie Bradshaw fan of course. "Little Women" is at its core all about Old School American values, such as temperance, forgiveness, hard work. It has astute lessons aplenty--to rival even old Aesopus himself. Laurie and Amy have the best lines, & there are plenty of groans amidst cute vignettes and harsh but necessary life lessons--for Americans and non alike. This is relevant today, more so than "On the Road" or other so called "quintessential American classics"--& that's a genuine plus.

This one stands as outstanding soap opera theatrics woven intelligently with American history herself. Good stuff, like a wise mentor of American Lit would say. Also, mega appropriate for the season!

(2014)

There will be spoilers.

Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral story-book, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in her pocket. But, you see, Jo wasn't a heroine; she was only a struggling human girl, like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood suggested.

I first read this book as a tween, and had a real love-hate reaction to it, love of the first half, and I pretty much hated the last half. Beth's death made me cry, and I loathed sad books passionately, but most of all I loathed Professor Bhaer, for two reasons. The minor one was that he was ugly and forty, which was utterly disgusting to me, as my grandparents then were in their forties. Euw! But the real reason I felt utterly betrayed by Alcott was because my own limited experience laid a palimpsest over the story, distorting Alcott's meaning. Well, but even if I hadn't been twitted by the well-meaning adults in my life to stop writing silly fairy tales and concentrate on Real Life if I must scribble stories, I could not have taken her meaning, as my lack of life experience was exactly what she was talking about in those scenes.

I read the book again at another period of my life when I probably shouldn't have, as the sorrowful parts overshadowed the rest.

Then I recently reread it, and hey, it was a completely different book from the one I'd read as a kid. Funny, that, how much a text changes over the decades. To me, that is the sign of a great book.

The first thing I noticed was the humorous skill of the narrator, who sometimes, in true nineteenth century fashion, comes right out and talks to the reader, then vanishes again, and lets the characters talk and think for themselves.

I saw this time how skillfully Alcott set up Amy's and Laurie's romance. How splendidly Alcott painted Laurie's and Jo's friendship, and her courage in maintaining that hey, a man and a woman really can be good buddies. Yeah, Laurie goes through some heart-pangs, but he gets over it, and finally gets some emotional growth while being thwarted for the first time in a life of getting pretty much what he wanted all the time. There were occasional falters that showed the author's hand. Like I found it hard to believe that Laurie, as a teenage boy, would moralize quite so much over Meg prinking at her first party. I could totally see him being uncomfortable, but that's a small thing.

As a kid I'd been bored stiff by Amy's and Laurie's courtship, but this time, I loved the images of Europe, and appreciated how skillfully Alcott had brought the two through the years to their shared delights. I found their courtship one of the strengths of the book.

And then there was Professor Bhaer. The scene where he rejoices in Jo's giving up her writing after her humiliation over his opinion of trashy stories that I took as such a betrayal as a teen read utterly differently to me now. What he resented was Jo pandering to the modern taste for sex, violence, and melodrama, especially when she knew so little about sex and violence. Jo was perpetrating cliches, empty calories, because it was easy money, and he thought she could do better.

I had to laugh when I recollected that not so long ago I critiqued a teenage-written manuscript, suggesting that that writing about forty-year-old married people might wait until more was known about what marriage actually meant. What I had taken as a tween (because sex went right over my head) was that Professor Bhaer was anti-fantasy. Wrongo, but I didn't have the life experience to see where he was going about lack of life experience.

As for his being forty, that seems to have been a nineteenth century tic. Hello Mr. Knightley! And not just in fiction--just a couple days ago I was reading Horatio Nelson's dispatches. In winter of 1800 he is smirking about Sir John Acton, well into his sixties, marrying his thirteen year old niece. Smirking, not exclaiming in horror and disgust, the way we would now.

In short, Jo and the Professor's romance took on all the charm that had completely passed me by.

Meanwhile there were all the old scenes I'd remembered so well, still funny, and poignant, and beautiful. Alcott does get preachy, but she's aware of it; at one point, after encouraging young people not to make fun of spinsters, she gets on with the story after wondering if her audience has fallen asleep during her little homily.

These homilies all point toward love as well as acceptance, faith as well as resignation. Caring for one's fellow-being, whether it be a poor person, as the dying Beth made little gifts for poverty-stricken children and dropped them out of the window just to see smiling faces. There is so much beauty in this book, and so much appreciation of beauty, as well as illustration of many shades of love.

It was also interesting to get visual overlays, for last autumn I'd visited Orchard House, where May (Amy) had drawn all over the walls in her room and a couple of other rooms, carefully preserved, where Jo's room was full of books, overlooking the garden; between two tall windows was the writing desk her father had made for her. Beth's piano. You could feel wisps of the love the family had for one another, which Alcott had put into the book, along with her personal struggles to be a better person; she gave her alter ego, Jo, a happier ending than she actually managed to get. (And though she didn't know it at the time, a happier ending for her artist sister May, as well.)

I won't wait so long for my next reread.

Never liked this one. I read Alcott back around the time I was first reading the Brontes and Dickens, and her books always struck me as incredibly dull in comparison. I was probably about 12, though, so I suppose I should try it again someday.

Apparently I'm an awful person. I just completely hated this! which came as quite a surprise. I was expecting Jane Austen-ness, whom I love, but while the language was similar, the sentimentality was cloying, the moralizing unrelenting, the plot lurching (serialized, I'm guessing), the characters caricatures, the themes of goodness, love and moral responsibility revolting. THIS is what our foremothers at one time believed was the ideal for womanhood? (No wonder they eventually revolted, but) THIS is what American women aspired to? Flaccid, be-ribboned, personhood-less dolls? Shock and outrage!
I concede that I must read about Alcott and the historical context of this book that everyone else loves, but I doubt that could reverse my interpretation.
One positive: is Jo March the first transgendered woman in American literature? The constant harping on Jo's boyishness and frustration with her female lot was authentic and just a little too... distinct. Methinks Jo March, circa 2000s, would be taking hormones, adding an E, and being a lot happier.

I wanted to reread this story since another movie has been recently released based on this book, and also because I forgot what it was about since I read it in 1972. I began rereading my old copy that I bought when I was in Grade 4, and after comparing it with the ebook version my daughter was reading, I realized that my modern abridged edition, published in 1955, was pretty much cut in half, with only 283 pages. Several phrases, sentences, paragraphs and even whole chapters were omitted! Therefore, I purchased the latest edition (published 2019 with a cover depicting the actresses from the latest movie). Needless to say, a lot of questions were now answered!

Overall, one has to be mindful that this story was first published in 1868 (over 150 years ago), so language, thoughts, mores and behaviors were quite different then than they are today. I suppose readers back then would have found this book to be quite forward-thinking. As for myself, I found this book to be, in a word, charming. Even the "sex scene" between Meg and John was alluded to with such delicacy that you could miss it if you weren't paying close attention. And even though I remembered that Beth dies, I still had tears in my eyes while reading the touching prose describing her death.

If you are interested in reading classic literature, put this book on your "To Read" list!