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March

A Novel

By Geraldine Brooks

(24)

| Hardcover | 9780670033355

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Book Description

As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researcContinue

As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched, March is an extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history.

From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. To evoke him, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father—a friend and confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In her telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through.

Spanning the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott’s optimistic children’s tale to portray the moral complexity of war, and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism—and by a dangerous and illicit attraction. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks’s place as an internationally renowned author of historical fiction.

Critics

  • March By Geraldine Brooks

    Like many women, Geraldine Brooks was inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which she first read as a girl in Australia. Though her mother, whom Brooks calls one of the world's great cynics, advised her to take it with a grain of salt ( nobod ... (read full critics)

    bookpage published on Mon, 13 Sep 2010

  • March

    March Geraldine Brooks Penguin Paperback 304 pages January 2006 In her latest novel, Geraldine Brooks borrows a page from the Louisa May Alcott classic, Little Women, exploring the fate of Mr. March, the father gone to the Civil war as his family wai ... (read full critics)

    curledup published on Tue, 7 Sep 2010

3 Reviews

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  • "March" tells the story of John March, known to lots of us as the absent father in "Little Women", Louisa May Alcott's classic American novel.

    I would normally avoid novels like this one, where the author has taken a character or characters from someone else's novel and creates another novel arou ... (continue)

    "March" tells the story of John March, known to lots of us as the absent father in "Little Women", Louisa May Alcott's classic American novel.

    I would normally avoid novels like this one, where the author has taken a character or characters from someone else's novel and creates another novel around them.

    It always feels to me like they are sort of cheating. What do you think? Is this a reasonable thing to do with someone else's original work? Despite my reservations on this method of creating a novel when I heard that March had been written I decided to give it go, if only because 'Little Women' is one of my all time favourite novels.

    Well did I do the right thing giving March a chance? No, not really as I doubt I would ever have read this if it had not been about a fictional character whose existence I already knew of. Although of course I did not know much about him, as he is away at war in Little Women.

    There is no doubt that Geraldine Brooks has produced a well researched novel basing the character of the protagonist John March on her studies of the letters and journals of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson Alcott.

    So from 'Little Women' and her other research she created the fictional world of Mr. March's experiences as a chaplain during the American Civil War. As an abolitionist he finds the war very testing of his beliefs, especially when he witnesses acts of cruelty and racism.
    Much of the story is written in the form of letters home as he promised to write often to his beloved wife and daughters telling of his experiences. He protects his family from the true horrors of his wartime experiences but this inability to tell them the truth causes him distress in its self.

    In other parts the story is told in flashbacks to us by John March himself. Telling how during the war he meets once again a young slave girl, Grace who had a great impact on him in his youth.

    Grace appears for a third time when an injured John is sent to a hospital in Washington and as in the original novel his wife is sent for. This part of the novel is told by Mrs March herself giving her voice the chance to express the grief felt as she is reunited with her husband, whom she finds tormented by what he sees as failure. The final chapters are once again in the voice of John March. Physically but not mentally he is soon well enough to go home. Finding he does not want to it is to Grace he turns only to be gently told that 'home' is where he is needed.

    Using the character of John March, Geraldine Brooks has created a touching well written story which is in my opinion a decent read but nothing more.

    It seems I may well be in the minority holding this opinion as I learnt that the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006. This award is presented to a 'distinguished' work of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.

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    Lindyloumac said on Jun 29, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • March

    This book starts out from the view-point of Mr. March (father from Little Women). It is set during the time he was away from the March family home, serving down south in the civil war. Brooks handles both the battle scenes and post battle scenes convincingly but the book bogs down severely in the ... (continue)

    This book starts out from the view-point of Mr. March (father from Little Women). It is set during the time he was away from the March family home, serving down south in the civil war. Brooks handles both the battle scenes and post battle scenes convincingly but the book bogs down severely in the middle as Brooks fills us in on the history of the abolitionist movement and on March's own personal history. However, the story soon returns to the current Civil War storyline which thankfully allows the pace of the book to pick back up again. Most of the second part of the book is told from the viewpoint of Marmee (mother from Little Women).

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    Readingrat said on Dec 29, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • My thoughts

    I enjoyed this historical fiction set in the early 19th century and in the early years of the U.S. Civil War. I liked reading about the Underground Railroad, John Brown, and the transcendentalist movement (Thoreau, Emerson). I think it helps to have read Little Women first so March's descriptions of ... (continue)

    I enjoyed this historical fiction set in the early 19th century and in the early years of the U.S. Civil War. I liked reading about the Underground Railroad, John Brown, and the transcendentalist movement (Thoreau, Emerson). I think it helps to have read Little Women first so March's descriptions of his wife and daughters become more familiar.

    Is this helpful?

    krin5292 said on Aug 21, 2007 | Add your feedback

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