While I'm overdue for a re-read, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is one of my favorite novels, and I'll proudly admit that I'm a huge fan of the 1994 film (Christian Bale? Transcendentalism? Sign me up!). But did I enjoy Geraldine Brooks's March, a parallel novel told from the perspective of the absent Mr. March? No. I did not enjoy it. At all.

In March, the eponymous character joins the Union army as a civil war chaplain more because he wants to impress his wife than because he's led by his conscious. His letters home are more fiction than fact as he tries to shield his girls from the horrors of war, but the reader gets to experience the war's assault on March's idealism and naivette right from the start. He's soon sent to freed cotton plantation for indiscretions involving an educated slave named Grace whom he has previously encountered. "Things" happen--I'll just be mysterious and leave it at that to avoid spoiling the middle of the novel for you--and after a while March gets sick and ends up in the army hospital. His wife Marmee soon joins him; the story then switches points of view and we get Marmee's
perspective on her marriage as she learns about her husband's experiences in the war.

March narrowly avoids the parallel novel trap--you know, the one where it's just telling us what we already know (see: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow)--by telling the story of the absent member of the March family. Unfortunately, since Little Women mostly left us in the dark about what Mr. March did while he was away at war, Brooks is free to fill in the gap with her own fanciful imaginings.

That would be fine if those imaginings were keeping in character with Alcott's original novels. But honestly, after reading this novel, I felt like Brooks had tainted something wonderful from my childhood. Suddenly Mr. March is an adulterer and Marmee is a harpy. When did that happen? Did I miss a chapter in Little Women?

I was hoping to enjoy this novel, as I'd liked Brooks' Year of Wonders well enough, but I almost put March down midway through. I only finished it so that I can say I disliked it knowing that I did give it ample opportunity to draw me in. I don't mind characters having flaws and moral dilemmas, but the events of March are so far removed from those of Little Women that Brooks could have easily fashioned a Civil War novel with characters of her own devising and left Alcott's creations alone. There's really not much tying the two novels together--so little, in fact, that it seems that Brooks decided to use the character of Mr. March merely to capitalize on the popularity of a classic novel that is beloved by many.

I really don't have anything else to say about the novel, other than this: in the afterword, Brooks states that her mother was correct when she told her that "nobody in real life is such a goody-goody as that Marmee" and adds that "Alcott's real family was far less perfect, and therefore much more interesting, than the saintly Marches." I disagree. There are many people in this world who strive for high ideals and live their lives in willing service to others, and I think the character of Marmee stands as a prime example of such a person. If Brooks is unable to recognize that such people actually do exist or lacks the skill to write them in a way that will interest people, that's her problem--but it's not a good reason to knock them, and it's definitely not just cause to rewrite a classic novel to fit her disillusioned view of the world.