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March |  | Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  186 reviews
Sales Rank: 3582
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0143036661
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780143036661
ASIN: 0143036661
Publication Date: January 31, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From Louisa May Alcotts beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brookss place as a renowned author of historical fiction.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 186
A short but deep reflection of the Civil War. August 29, 2010
P. J. Owen (Atlanta GA USA)
March is Geraldine Brooks' take on what Mr. March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, was doing while the women awaited his return. The answer: quite a lot.
Mr. March is an idealistic cleric who joins the Union army as chaplain in a moment of self-righteous rapture. As we shall see, Mr. March's idealism presents many problems for him. After a hard battle in which a man Mr. March tries to help cross a river is born away by it, this idealism, which aggravates the soldiers in his unit, wins him re-assignment as a teacher on a cotton plantation. Though at first Mr. March is quite distressed by his rejection, the idea of being a trailblazer in the job of teaching slaves soon takes hold of his idealistic mind.
Taken over by the Union Army, the plantation is run by a Northern business man tasked with operating it as a business of profit and loss while treating the slaves as employees, which included paying them salaries. But when March arrives, he finds many of his idealistic notions about the experiment disabused. He finds that the businessman doesn't treat the slave much better than their owners had. He finds slaves stuck in their previous world, scared or unwilling to learn anything from him or break free from their bonds. He even finds slaves who are resistant to the Union's aims and stick with their owners rather than help the plantation. In fact, these conflicts finally come to a head when one such group of Rebels and former slaves invade the plantation and wreak havoc. In the end, Mr. March finds himself unable to protect those he wants so badly to help, and he ends up in a Washington hospital.
The structure of this novel is interesting. The majority of the book is from Mr. March's perspective. We see his letters home to his family, which are less than honest about the horrors he sees. We are the only witnesses to that. Chapters are also interspersed that tell us of March's past. We see him in his early twenties as a guest on a plantation he'd tried to peddle his wares to and where he sees slavery up close for the first time. In his typically romantic way, he even falls in love with one. Then we also see him years later, meeting his future wife, Marmee, and raising his family amidst an absolitionist fervor that bankrupts them.
When March ends up in the Washington hospital, Brooks changes to Marmee's perspective and we learn the differences in how they see the things that have happened in the past. For example, in March's version of his decision to join the Union Army, he interprets Marmee's muted reaction as one of support. It is only from Marmee that we learn that she was in fact aghast at his idea and angry that he left her alone to run the family. It wasn't necessary for the story, but I thought adding Marmee's POV was a nice trick by Brooks that added depth.
Her prose is also quite good, especially the evocative images she conjures of war and its horrors. She's drawn some great character here too. March seems simple at first, but we learn over time how conflicted he really is. He is a man of good faith and intentions, rattled by guilt. For example, later he feels so much guilt for the man he let float down the river that he imagines he let the man go rather tried to help with all his might. Later inaction in a similar situation feeds this illusion until he's in agony. It would be hard not to see the humanity in him.
I found some of the dialect of the time to be a little stereotypical and some parts can be slow moving, but overall this is a great book. I would definitely recommend it to fans of Little Women, but also to anyone looking for a short but deep period piece.
 Disappointing - 21st century writing attempting 19th century speech July 24, 2010
Pauline (Wallingford, CT USA)
I was very disappointed in this book. I had a very good impression because of the various reviews and the Pulitzer Prize but find this book disappointing. March's actions do not align with the moral of the little women he raised and the high standards he holds in Alcott's Little Women. The language doesn't read like a 19th century speaker. It sounds very modern. Killer Angels is my standard for a well written civil war era book and this doesn't come close. Chamberlain's voice rings true. March's falls short. He rationalizes in a way a 20th or 21st century man would. I cannot recommend this book to anyone.
If you are a Little women devotee you will want to read March July 12, 2010
Philly gal (PHILA, PA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are a Little Women devotee you will surely want to read March. This Pulitzer Prize winning novel is the story of Peter March the father of the March clan. While March is an absent father in Little Women, his life story is the basis of this novel. His character is loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson Alcott. The first part of the novel is narrated by March. He is introduced as an itinerant peddler working though the southern states in the years before the Civil War. We meet him as a young man; see his courtship and marriage of Marmee and the birth of his children. He is an idealistic abolitionist preacher who is influenced by his friendship with Thoreau and Emerson (neighbors in New England) and his partnership with John Brown, the violent abolitionist to whom he loses his fortune. In a fit of patriotic fervor March enlists as a chaplain to accompany Union troops. His naiveté and impossibly high ideals soon run afoul of his coarse Union companions. Caught in an embarrassing situation with a black slave who he had meet earlier in his travels he is reassigned to a plantation now operated by a northern manager and manned by freed slaves or "contraband" as the free blacks are known. His assignment is to teach the freed slaves reading and writing. The crux of the novel occurs on this plantation. March's idealism is challenged by the everyday cruelty and racism of both Northern and Southern soldiers. The harsh plight of the slaves seems unchanged when their "freedom" is achieved. A Confederate attack on the plantation lands March in a Washington DC hospital and then the first person narration switches to Marmee. Marmee recounts a different version of prior events and reacts to the knowledge she gains about her husband's life. Her difficulty in dealing with her rage and disappointment in March rings true. The return of Marmee and March to the idyllic setting of their New England home masks the changes in both of them; he the shattered and scarred dreamer, she the newly wise wife and mother.
The dialogue throughout this novel is firmly rooted in the 19th century but seems very easy and straightforward. The depth of description of even the minor characters allows the readers to know them. The plantation manager is anything but one dimensional, while he seems a petty, cruel tyrant we gradually learn of the struggles he has in managing the plantation. The difficulties in communication that March and Marmee have seemed timeless and could easily be attributed to a 21st century couple. This is a very different Civil War novel but I think will please many readers. This type of novel is among my favorites - historical fiction that has a well told story peopled by sympathetic but not perfect characters that have depth, emotions and passions that are universal.
 a "must" for fans of Little Women June 10, 2010
cln724 (Princeton, NJ USA)
I read Little Women several times growing up and always loved it.
Now comes the "back story" of "Father", who is away fighting in the Civil War.
I loved the way the author fleshed out the characters of Father and Marmee, and wove in details about famous people of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Brown. The details of the Civil War were horrific but fascinating.
 not a review of the book itself, but the kindle edition May 15, 2010
Word Nerd (Virginia, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is not a review of the book itself, but of the formatting of the book for the Kindle. I was shocked at the number of misspellings and punctuation errors throughout the Kindle edition I read. Two completely misspelled words within the same paragraph, sentences frequently ending with no punctuation whatsoever, commas and dashes dropped into words and sentences at random... I might expect this from one of the "free" public domain books, since they are formatted by volunteers, but presumably since I paid for this ebook, someone was paid to format it. If Penguin is in need of a proofreader for its ebooks, I'm available!! Interestingly enough, I read People of the Book, also by Geraldine Brooks on my Kindle and found no such errors.
Have any other Kindle readers encountered this problem? Is it just this particular book?
Showing reviews 1-5 of 186
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