March

What a terrific novel. “Little Women” from the point of view of the absent father, Mr. March. Beautifully written, the story credibly allows readers of the Louisa May Alcott classic to see behind the curtain to the Civil War where the dad served as a Union chaplain. The story’s ending is worth the price of admission alone. And if you haven’t read “Little Women, don’t fret; the context is more than explained for you to fully understand where Mr. March has been as well as where he is in this novel. This is a real treat for those of us who read novels as much for their writing quality as their plot development. Louisa May would be proud of her successor Geradline.

Mr March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’, is an idealist, a staunch abolitionist... and flawed character. While March is away, working as a chaplain and teacher in the American Civil War, he writes cheerful letters to his ‘little women’. The reader, however, learns of his struggles with the horrors of war, illness, guilt, regret, and disillusionment with himself, his faith and his political convictions. When sick and injured, March is taken to a Washington hospital, Marmee comes to nurse him and is confronted by the truth about her husband’s life.
While perhaps a little sentimental, I sympathised with Mr March, not least of all, because of his strong convictions and his very human inability to live show more up to them. show less

I confess I went into this book grudgingly; I have zero interest in the Civil War. Battle narratives just aren't my thing. And yet, March gripped me. Mr. March of the Little Women family is off to serve as a chaplain in the Union army.

The book is told from both the POV of Mr. March and Marmee, aka Mrs. March. The writing is breathtaking. Brooks handles description evocatively yet with a subtle touch. "I had been there, on a spring morning, when the fog stood so thick on the river that it looked as though the bowl of the sky had spilled all its milky clouds into the valley."

Many parts of this book were quite difficult to read, as can be expected in a battle story. But this goes beyond that, watching the suffering of the enslaved and show more vulnerable. But those portions are an important part of the narrative. This novel is a great reminder that I can't immediately dismiss books because of the subject matter. It's clear why this novel won a Pulitzer! show less

Upon starting this book I rather quickly realized that this was not a story to rush through. The author obviously went to great effort to write lovely prose, and I suspect it was at least partly to honor the sort of prose written by some soldiers in the American Civil War. I've read enough of it to realize that at times it can be quite purple, but more often just a little flowery. Brooks goes for flowery here. It might bother a few people but I found it rather gorgeous. I read this novel at half speed. I found myself constantly re-reading lines in various places. This was not for a lack of understanding, but rather to savor the vision created in words.

This is the story of Mr. March, and his year away at war and recovery. Mr. March is show more the father of the Little Women of Louisa May Alcott's novel. War stories frequently can be disturbing when revealing the horrors of war. The Civil War had fields of dead and dying at many engagements. It is disturbing in the extreme to think of all the young lives damaged and destroyed by the war. It is disturbing to think that the war even had to be fought. Are there such things as just wars? One needn't lose limbs to be damaged by wars.

There are many things to enjoy in this book as well as unpleasant things. There are some things in here that will bother some readers. I was a little bothered, but the storytelling trumped the weak points. Mr. March I found to be a man that was hard to like as the book progressed - that wasn't my initial impression, but it slowly turned that way. I didn't really dislike him but he's a bit of an odd bird and made some unfortunate choices. I might suggest that the reader review the author's afterword before reading the story to get a better understanding of Mr. March and the story. In the telling, the story shifts back and forth in time, from his days as a young man, and then to his trials during the Civil War. Back and forth. We see who he was, who he is, and who he becomes.

This novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2006. Read in 2016 show less

MARCH, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is a well-researched, deeply emotional, and imaginatively rich portrait of "Mr. March", the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's (1832-1888) semi-autobiographical book, LITTLE WOMEN. Awarded four stars on Goodreads.

As author Geraldine Brooks explains in her Afterword, she had no shortage of quality research material to work from. Because she used Louisa May Alcott's actual father, educator Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), as a model for Mr. March. And not just by reading Bronson Alcott's own extensive journals, but also by drawing from mentions of him by his famous Concord, MA neighbors -- philosophers Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), and author show more Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64).

Cleverly combining historical nuggets with her own dramatic license, Brooks creates Mr. March as an admirable, complex, financially naive, self-absorbed idealist who, like many men, succumbs to the American Civil War's "call to glory." Of course, March finds war anything but glorious and the passages describing his experiences are profoundly difficult to read. Though serving as a chaplain and teacher, he does not escape the violence, beatings, rape, and murder that were inherent in both the lives of enslaved people and the nature of war.

Brooks also transforms the saint-like Marmee from LITTLE WOMEN into a fully three-dimensional woman. One who at times feels stifled, angry, unappreciated, and jealous, and struggles to practice the very values she has taught her four daughters.

The author also crafts a wonderful back story to the Marches. How the couple met and courted and how a once well-to-do March lost his fortune. Skillfully, in less than 300 pages, Brooks has not just fleshed out these two adult characters but also explored a number of rich themes of the period - including the carnage of war, the meaning of courage, the abysmal state of medical care in the 1860s, the nature of love, the foundations of a strong marriage, the brutal reality of life as an enslaved person, and the devastating impact of survivor's guilt.

It beautifully written with a style that feels as though it was composed at the same time as LITTLE WOMEN, instead of some 150 years later. The only reason I did not give it five stars is because it felt a bit slow to me for the first third. Highly recommended, especially for those who have a deep affection for the March family. show less

I love the idea of this book and the way it has been carried out; books based on other books are one of my favourite things to read if I know the original source.

Based on Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women, Brooks has taken the outline of the father who has only a small role in it, and expanded it and provided more layers of nuance to Marmee and March than the original did.

The story opens with one of the letters in Little Women from March to his family - he is away fighting for the Union side in the Civil War - and straight away we are provided with a context for the letter. All is not as it might appear and the soldiers have just been routed from their previous positions and lost a lot of men. March is a minister to the men but also show more undertakes any jobs that might need doing - medical, portering and ministering. But he is also an idealist and throughout the dark story we come to understand what happens to an idealist when he has to go to war.

There are shadows of his idealism bumping up against reality even before March goes to war. He loses all his money investing in a charlatan who is an abolitionist and his family endures a penurious position because of it. He then gets carried away by his own emotions when giving a speech to the young men who are off to war and goes as well, leaving his wife to cope with their children and no money.

During his time away, March is exposed to the realities of slavery, paying Black people for their work and falling in love with a mixed race woman.

When he is very unwell, his wife is summoned only to discover he is in love with another woman, and when Beth catches scarlet fever she returns home to nurse her. Much is made of Marmee's temper which must be tamed, but when we get the chapter written from her point of view, the picture of a happy family starts to crack.

The writing is sublime. Describing a house March found himself at,

I had been there before, on a spring morning, then the fog stood so thick on the river that it looked as though the bowl of the sky had spilled all its murky clouds into the water.
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Mixed into the text are real characters such as Emmerson Waldo and Henry Thoreau and even John Brown, all helping to create a world for the story, weaving fact and fiction together.

So, what happens when an idealist goes to war? He finds he has to face up to his own lack of courage, the fact that he irritates people and so can't get things done and is out of place. He does find his place teaching slaves and their children to read and his kindness towards them is returned but it is not a comfortable read. And he is not a success overall, returning home with more doubts than he started off with. show less

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 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 show more 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. show less