I’ve always been a fan of “Little Women” and grew up in the area in which it was set, was forced to read Thoreau and enjoyed Emerson, so I felt quite cozy in this opposite side tale of Mr. March, the little women’s father. Brooks has based her portrayal of March on the reality of Louisa May Alcott’s father and the times then when people got pretty serious ideas about vegetarianism (wouldn’t even give their poor sheep a haircut as the fleece ‘belonged to the sheep’) and such. New England at that time was working its way through the Unitarian Universalist process as well, and there was a mighty group of male intellectuals discussing the world while their wives were kept quiet and busy in the home. (Sigh).
The March in this book is a bit of a pain in the arse. I personally would have smacked his sanctimonious face now and again, as he in this story blames himself for every bad thing that happened in his civil war experience and continually blunders about making things worse for everyone, not least his family starving at home, but directed to give their scant food to the poor. He is a bit tiresome and tends to offend with his little ways, but despite this the story is riveting as an uncommon view of the civil war. (It is a brutal view, with many entrails, so the uneasy stomached may well want to avoid)
I enjoyed the chapters where Marmee is given a voice, too, and shows herself to be a woman of spirit and her own feelings about her tiresome husband. She adds a leavening that helps cut through his often overblown self-abnegation.

A fast read and a good one. I enjoyed it quite a bit, despite the seeming Forest Gumpian ‘all the famous people hung out with March’ issue. It’s likely Alcott’s father knew the big men of the time (big men, very small pond) (see what I did there? Because Walden pond IS a very small pond...), so I didn’t find it as annoying as the actual Forest Gump story.

I’ll be seeking out more by this author. ( )

As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the American Civil 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 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 Brooks’ 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.

In "Little Women", the father figure is away for much of the story. This is Brooks' attempt to tell his story of his time away from the family during the American Civil War.

I dont know Little Women well enough to know how well Brooks ties the story in, and whether March's (and Mamie's) characters stack up against the previous books. However, March and the Civil War are the centre of the book, and Brooks pulls forward the problems of Slavery, the treatment of the slaves (and those wanting to free them) but the rebels and army who didnt want the Status Quo changing. It's the beatings, the cruelty, the killings etc - this makes the book sound more graphic than it is and whilst these are brought up, are not the centre of the story.

In summary: good book as a historical fiction book set during the American Civil War which is a reasonable addition to the "Little Women" canon. ( )

I liked the way the story combined the lives we know from "Little Women" with the letters written by March followed by his harsh experiences during the Civil War. Marmee is written up as more of a spitfire than one would guess from Alcott's story. It did take me some while to recognize March as a separate person from Bronson Alcott, whom he was modeled after. This was quite an interesting book, but at some point it started to seem fantastical--all the ways Grace shows up in March's life are more coincidental than would occur in real life. ( )

[March] has been on my TBR shelf for far too long, but I wasn't looking forward to reading it as I have mixed feelings about other novels Brooks has written. This is the back story about Papa March from [Little Women], absent for that novel working as a chaplain and whatever is needed down in the war zone. He sees and participates (as a passive observer) in horrible things and most of his efforts to help seem wasted, eventually he falls ill, Marmee comes to nurse him, he won't go home with her, then Beth gets sick, you all know the story if you've read [Little Women] (Which I am going to assume you have if you read this novel.) So this is all about what happens to March while he is away, a window into the war. On the whole a worthy novel but . . . not compelling is what comes to mind? So carefully and thoroughly and conscientiously researched and written that light and life never fully enter in and overall I felt a little bludgeoned and truly never warmed up at all to March who, it seemed to me was suspiciously good at justifying his infatuation as being something other than what it was and came across also as being immature in his insistence of his failures. What I think is that Brooks felt that in order for the story to work, Papa March had to be a stubborn git -- but I think there would have been other better and more convincing ways to develop his character. I think she wanted to create a flawed man, and she did do that, I guess, too flawed? I don't know. I'd like to give it a *** but I am adding a 1/2 for all the work Brooks put into research. ***1/2

Geraldine Brooks has created a novel "packed with the anguish of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unique man" using the character of the absent father, March, from Louisa May Alcott's cherished classic Little Women (Sue Monk Kidd). Brooks follows March as he departs from his family to support the Union cause in the Civil War with "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today). His experiences will fundamentally alter his marriage and put his most fervent convictions to the test. March solidifies Geraldine Brooks' status as a distinguished writer of historical fiction with its sumptuous writing and completely unique story steeped in period specifics. 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner. ( )