A review by jon_thereader
March by Geraldine Brooks

4.5

I went into this book completely blind and couldn’t be happier about it. Without reading the back of the book, and bibliophile will come to realize that you are reading within the world of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. The story follows the father of the March family -whose “little women” (the four daughters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy) are the main characters in Alcott’s famous novel - and imagines the world he faced during the year he spends absent from his family. We learn much of his backstory and what he endured during his time surviving as a minister in the union army as well as finding his passion of teaching slaves or blacks being held as “contraband of war” to read and write. He is so doggedly just even to his own detriment. His views offer a refreshing perspective while he exists in a culture that (while being in the north) disagrees with his passionate abolitionist stances. 

The writing in this book is ‘stunnin’ and I’m shocked that it is ranked as low as it is. There were some points that felt a little slow, but as a reader we were able to so fully experience this character and understand what he went through/how he viewed the world he was in. 

We also get a small bit of the book from his wife’s perspective, and it is no surprise that the two of them raised such impressive “little women.”

I also thought it was cool that, just as the characters in Little Women are based off of Alcott and her sisters, Mr. March is based off Mr. Alcott.

If I had to choose one word to describe this book and its main character, it would be earnest.