March by Geraldine Brooks Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of March
Book Review: Beautifully written Civil War novel
Summary: 5 Stars
March is one of the most interesting and enjoyable books that I have read this year. It is beautifully written. Although the character, March, is from the book, Little Women, which I read when I was a child and don't remember much about, it's really a story of one man's experiences and his feelings during the Civil War. You don't need to read Little Women to enjoy this story. I am starting to read Ms. Brooks' book entitled, Year of Wonders, because I loved March so much and enjoy her writing style. I look forward to seeing more books by this author.Book Review: Beautifully written book.....not so great ending.
Summary: 4 Stars
I won't go into details about the plot; amazon has already done a pretty decent job at that. What I do want to do is address some of the other reviewers' comments and also talk a little bit about why I gave this book 4 stars and not 5.
First: This book is NOT a sequel to "Little Women." Anyone who complains that "as a sequel to 'Little Women' this book sucks" is, I'm afraid, an idiot who neither owns, nor has access to, a dictionary. "March" is what you would call a revisionist text -- it takes characters and storylines from one story (in this case, Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women"), and uses them to create an entirely new universe of the author's making.
Like most people who have read it, I love "Little Women." Unfortunately, it is somewhat hampered by 19th century conventions regarding what is and is not proper to write about. Written more than a century and a half later, "March" does not suffer from any of those pitfalls. We get sex, violence, and an abundance of passion -- none of which is gratuitous. Most importantly, we get to see the virtuous figures of Marmee and Mr. March, sketched in "Little Women," in a completely new (and far more complex, interesting, and realistic) light.
To get a few other things out of the way: stylistically, Ms. Brooks' writing here is nearly flawless. She has the voice of a poet, without being pretentious, schlocky, or needlessly verbose. On several occasions, her words brought me to tears. Don't trust the words of any reviewer who gripes that the book "is too long" or "drags way too much in the beginning" -- I'm fairly certain the person is either a callow teen or else a supremely ignorant adult who can only stomach things written by authors like Dan Brown.
Here is my beef with this book: SPOILER ALERT!
(1) I wanted to hear more from Marmee. I can't tell you how welcome and refreshing her point of view / narrative was after keeping company with the high-minded, highly naive, and somewhat exasperating, Mr. March, for so many chapters. Her realization that she has been betrayed and lied to for so many years, by her lover, her partner, and her confidante, was for me, the climax of the novel. How would she confront him, I wondered? Would she berate him, shame him, remind him of all that she sacrificed for the sake of his misguided idealism? Marmee never gets her day, unfortunately. A true martyr (more than Mr. March could ever claim to be), she bites her tongue for the sake of her daughters. She remains ever supportive of her husband during his recovery, and provides him with the love and physical comforts he needs to heal and come back home to his family.
(2) I realize that Bronson Alcott (and therefore, Mr. March), was an idealist, a philospher, an intellectual -- in short, a man of the mind, and not of the world. For the most part, I was able to go with the flow and accept him for what he was without judgment or censure. But towards the end of the novel, I started getting angry. While his loyal wife and expectant daughters waited for him to come home, he slowly recovered in a hospital in Washington only to....decide that he would follow Grace, his one-time love, in her duties as a war nurse?? And here's the kicker -- because he feels he is not WORTHY enough to come home to his family?! Selfish is what he is. Basically, we the readers are told that the only reason March goes back to Concord is because Grace tells him to. What a coward. What would his precious daughters think of him if they knew about his deceit, his disloyalty, his inconstancy? In the last pages of the novel he looks at each of his daughters and sees only the slaughtered slaves he left behind in the battlefields. What a father.
Don't get me wrong. This is an incredible book, and very deserving of all the accolades it has garnered. Much like its main character, however, it is imperfect. Read the novel, by all means, and revel in every beautifully crafted and heart-wrenching sentence. But do not expect to come away from the experience with anything less than the feeling that the novel, much like its protagonist, could have come to a better, and far more settling, conclusion.
Book Review: Book club enjoys a wonderful book.
Summary: 5 Stars
The book was enjoyed by all of the women in our building book club. It was a most unusual subject and Geraldine Brooks' writing style was a most important in the flow of the narrative.
We also had some very interesting input from some of the ladies about the Civil War, about prisoners on both sides and some of the romantisicm of Grace and March. Enjoyable.
Book Review: Brooks' Civil War 'March.'
Summary: 4 Stars
Inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (Signet Classics), in her compelling second novel, Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks (Year of Wonders), imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in LITTLE WOMEN. (In Alcott's novel, the March girls receive a letter from their father: "little was said of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered," Alcott writes about the letter; "it was a cheerful, hopeful letter full of lively descriptions.") Brooks' extraordinary novel reveals the hardship, danger and homesickness inherent to war and the silence typically surrounding the details of war. In writing to his wife Marmee, Brooks' protagonist says that he never promised her he would write the truth of the war around him, but instead writes about his longing for home and his four beautiful daughters. From his narrative, we learn that March enlists in the army as an idealistic Concord clergyman and abolitionist, influenced by his contemporaries, Thoreau, Emerson, and John Brown. A year later, he finds himself a changed man, waking every day in a sweat, in a condition of uncertainty: "One day, I hope to go back. To my wife, to my girls, but also to the man of moral certainty that I was that day, that innocent man, who knew with such clear confidence exactly what it was that he was meant to do" (p. 184). Chronologically, Brooks' novel follows March through four major events in his life. At age 19, when he was an impoverished Yankee peddler, March was first introduced to the life of a Virginia slaveholder and to Grace, the beautiful slave who gave him his first kiss--a kiss that changed his life. Later he meets the New England abolitionists, Margaret Day, John Brown and the Transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau. Then, as a chaplain in the army in Union-occupied Mississippi, March learns his politics are too radical for the leased Clement cotton plantation where he is stationed, so he is ordered to organize a school at Oak Landing for the newly freed slaves and their children. The final episode of Brooks' novel is set in a Washington, D.C. Union hospital, where March recuperates from a near-death experience, and where Grace re-enters his life, only to tell him to "Go home." Although MARCH is a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, it does not quite measure up to the standard set by Brooks' first novel, YEAR OF WONDERS, which explains why I've given it a four-star rating instead of five.
G. Merritt
Book Review: Cannot put this book down!
Summary: 5 Stars
Bought this book yesterday (Kindle version) and haven't been able to put it down. Great read - full characters, good drama, and I love the link to a sparsely developed character in another novel (Little Women).