troisoiseaux | Entries tagged with louisa may alcott

I submitted the mini-thesis I've been working on for the past eight months, so I can have a little book review, as a treat.

( Cassandra at the Wedding - Dorothy Baker )

( Persuasion - Jane Austen )

( Rose in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott )

( Enemy of All Mankind - Steven Johnson )

Current Music: Letters from the Atlantic - The Arcadian Wild

Read Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott, and enjoyed it more than Little Men, if only out of a sense of novelty. I hadn't read it before, and it definitely cranks up the drama compared to the earlier March family books, featuring shipwrecks and prison riots and collapsing mines alongside its more expectedly domestic storylines— Jo's niece wants to be an actress! Young love is in the air! A few of the Plumfield boys went to Harvard and have become total jerks!

( Read more... )

- Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux, which is what it says on the tin. Interesting to learn more about Louisa May Alcott, and the history, cultural impact, and society's shifting views of Little Women. I wasn't entirely persuaded by some of her analysis of the book itself, but you can't win 'em all. This book came out before the 2019 movie did, so I'm curious about what Rioux thought of Greta Gerwig's adaption— reading her takes on the other film adaptions, I kept thinking that it both fixed some of her complaints and included elements that she commented positively on in other adaptions?

- Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, which I'd started after re-reading Little Women back in Jan. 2020, but set aside after maybe a third of it and just... never picked back up. I tried again mostly because Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy piqued my interest in reading Jo's Boys, the third (or fourth, depending on whether you count the two parts of Little Women separately, which is apparently more common outside of the U.S.?) and last of the March family novels; I thought I should re-read this one first. It doesn't hold up as well as Little Women, imo. It's frequently charming, but I found the overall preachiness rather grating.

Recently read

I finished Little Women! Not to rehash the entire debate I had about this point with my best friend last week, but on the whole question of Jo/Bhaer vs. Jo/Laurie vs. Laurie/Amy, I'm even more solidly on Team The Way It Worked Out In Canon for having re-read the actual storyline.

Something I noticed in the second half of the book was that both Amy and Laurie had scenes where they declared themselves finished with art and music, respectively, for a lack of natural genius.* Then, in the last chapter, it's shown that they've both returned to art/music on a casual (hobby?) basis— Laurie composes a song for Marmee's birthday, and Amy discusses a sculpture she's making of her baby daughter. I feel like there's a capital-O Opinion on Art in there somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure what it is...?

* Interestingly, Jo was the only one who didn't have a moment like this— the couple of times she steps back from writing (i.e. to preserve the Integrity of her Art because the only stories she was able to sell were ~sensational~ ones, and then at the end of the book, there's a line about how she still wants to write a great novel but for the moment, her priority is telling stories for the entertainment of her boys) are unrelated to the debate of talent vs. genius. I suppose you could read in this that Jo does have a natural genius for writing, which is amusing in the context of Jo as Alcott's self-insert character.

Based off reviews by

skygiants and

rachelmanija, I checked out Elizabeth Hand's Wyldling Hall: in 1972, the frontman of a British folk-rock band mysteriously disappears from the ancient manor in the English countryside where they've decamped to record their second album. The story is told in the form of transcripts of interviews with the rest of the band and various involved parties - the band's manager, a music journalist and a girlfriend who had visited the band at Wylding Hall, a local who took photographs of the band's infamous last recording session - for a documentary investigating what happened that fateful summer, forty years before. Was it drugs? Ghosts? Ghosts on drugs?

( Spoilers )

I also discovered that Libby has comic books/graphic novels, so I read Noelle Stevenson's Nimona and an adaption of The Adventure Zone podcast's "Here There Be Gerblins" arc. Both were very cute! I'd read Nimona back when it was a webcomic, so that made me super nostalgic for all the webcomics I followed in high school, and then I ended up listening to the entirety of TAZ's "Murder on the Rockport Express" arc while home sick on Monday.

Currently reading

The Trials of the King of Hampshire: Madness, Secrecy, and Betrayal in Georgian England by Elizabeth Foyster, non-fiction about John Charles Wollop, the 3rd Earl of Portsmouth, who in 1823 became the subject of "the longest, costliest, and most controversial insanity trial in British history."

To read next

In keeping with the theme of Weird Shit Goes Down In Rural England, my next-available hold on Libby is Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss.

Recently read

Finished Helen Oyeyemi's darkly whimsical What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, which turned out to be something between a short story collection - which is what I had gone in expecting - and a traditional novel. With the exceptions of a couple of stand-alone stories (including a variation on Little Red Riding Hood that was the most genuinely chilling story in the book, imo) there's a handful of characters that slip easily into the background of each others' stories, creating longer arcs out of passing references/cameos, and there's a running theme of keys and the things they unlock - literally, metaphorically - that ties it all together.

The more I read of Oyeyemi's work, the more confused I am by what a trainwreck Boy, Bird, Snow was in terms of its one (1) LGBT character? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours had more gay(/bi!) characters/relationships than straight ones, and at least one trans character, which was narratively handled much better.

I also (re-)read The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, about - as the title suggests - a golem and a jinni, who through rather convoluted circumstances find themselves living in, respectively, the Jewish and Syrian enclaves of 1899 New York City. Like The Night Circus, this is a historical fantasy novel I originally read in high school, although unlike The Night Circus, I actually appreciated it more this time. It definitely slots neatly into the Good Omens-shaped place in my heart - two immortals with very different personalities finding they're the only ones who truly understand each other; a narrative that focuses not just on its supernatural protagonists but the "normal" humans around them, the both magic-touched or -inclined, or simply involved by sheer chance - but the time and place and its cultural/folklore roots makes it really unique. It's also a story with more layers than I had remembered/appreciated. Really enjoyed this one!

Currently reading

I'd forgotten how quickly the timeline of Little Women moves after the year-long arc of the first half— Meg is now a married mother of twins, Jo has published her first novel to such a wildly contrasting critical response that Alcott can only be poking fun at literary critics, Beth is still alive, and Amy is on her way to Europe.

Jo is and will always be my favorite of the March sisters, but I like Amy a lot more this time! I think I would have come to this conclusion on my own, no longer being 10 and petty, but to give credit where credit is due, Florence Pugh's enlighteningly sympathetic performance in Little Women (2019) certainly helped.

To read next

I've seen a lot about Elizabeth Hand's Wylding Hall on my corner of DW recently, so that's next!

Recently read

I finished The Past by Tessa Hadley; the title made more sense when, halfway through, the focus shifted from an increasingly tense family vacation in 20mumble, to another summer spent at their grandparents' country home, 40+ years earlier, and then back again to the present. Interestingly, the younger versions of two of the siblings - Harriet and Roland; their two younger sisters played less of a role (or not at all) in the flashback scenes, being too young or not born yet - reminded me less of their adult selves than of the second generation, their niece and nephew.

Overall, this book - particularly the "present" chapters - reminded me distinctly of the first half of Atonement, both in general atmosphere and specific parallels; luckily, things end less disastrously for everyone involved. I checked out the GoodReads page for this book after finishing it, and it appears to have elicited strongly divided reactions, with whether someone loved it or hated it depending on whether they like character- or plot-driven novels. I personally liked that the plot, such as it is, basically consists of nine people in a house all having their own personal dramas that they refuse to discuss with or even acknowledge to anyone else (I'd bet actual money that "wanted to say" was the most frequently used phrase in the book, followed closely by "thought") but I can see how someone else wouldn't.

I also splurged, with what was left of my Christmas B&N gift cards, on Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener, a just-released memoir about her experience working in non-technical/customer support roles at a couple of different San Francisco-based tech start-ups. Over the past six months or so, I've developed an interest in a niche of non-fiction that can be best described as Silicon Valley Horror Show; this one was unique in both perspective (cog in the machine vs. tech journalist investigating from the outside/a 3000 ft view) and execution. Like Anna Burns in Milkman, Wiener carefully avoided proper nouns - Facebook was "the social network everyone hated"; Stanford was "a renowned public university [...] largely considered a feeder for the tech industry" - which gave it a surreal sense of timelessness and placelessness even as it was clearly rooted in the specific time and place of Silicon Valley in the mid-2010s. It occasionally dipped into visuals that felt downright dystopian, only for it to hit a second later that, oh, no, this was real.

Currently reading

I saw the new Little Women movie (2019, dir. Greta Gerwig) earlier this month, so of course I had to re-read the book. I loved, loved, loved this book as a kid - I was Jo, Jo was me - but I had still somehow forgotten, in the 10+ years since I last read it, that it was actually really good and not just my childhood nostalgia talking.

I also started What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a collection of bewildering short stories by Helen Oyeyemi. I'm only three and a half stories in, but so far, each story has been made up of about 2-3 different ones, either meandering from one plotline to another - a story that starts out about a guy reluctantly fish-sitting for a friend who lives in a possibly haunted turns into a darkly satiric story about celebrity stan culture - or nestled within each other like matryoshka dolls, and they're full of things that should be creepy - sentient puppets, marshlands full of bodies drowned by a tyrannical king, goddesses summoned by vengeful teenage girls - but are merely intriguing.

To read next

It is a truth universally acknowledged: the closer you are to the front of a waitlist, the slower the person who currently has the book will read it. Libby has been telling me The Golem and the Jinni should be ready for me to read "in the next few days" for like... more than a week, now.

Recently read

99. Having recently remembered the existence of Louisa May Alcott's non-March-family-centric or -adjacent novels, I picked up her novel Eight Cousins, which is another one that I know for sure I read when I was 10-11 but had entirely forgotten in the years since.

To be honest, I enjoyed this one less than An Old-Fashioned Girl. Largely this is because it was even more blatantly a vehicle for Alcott's opinions on child-rearing, some of which admittedly still hold up - communicate with your kids! don't start enforcing gender roles too early! (or, you know, ever, but hey, points for getting that far in 1875) - and some of which don't. Example: pearl-clutching over the fact that the adventures in Boys' Adventure Books are - gasp! - unrealistic, and introduce their impressionable young readers to such scandalous flights of fancy as children captaining ships and millionaires adopting winsome orphans. Not to mention the slang! All of this came from the aunt that was An Ideal Mom, as opposed to the ones that were over-vain or over-fretful, and thus Not Ideal Moms, so evidently Alcott actually meant it?

There are some other 19th-century-isms that don't hold up great, including outright racism (as opposed to An Old-Fashioned Girl, which was merely rude about the Irish) and some... weird implications, vis-a-vis the types of relationships which were once appropriate between first cousins but now super, super aren't. This apparently gets even weirder and less implied in the sequel.

100. Just finished Doxology by Nell Zink, which is a novel I've struggled to figure out how to describe even as I've texted most of my friends from college about it over the past couple of days, since at one point it features (and has some very acerbic, if not inaccurate, comments about) our alma mater.

I think, at the heart of it, Doxology is a ghost story. The novel begins with a trio of friends in early 1990s New York City, where their dreams of making it big as a punk band is derailed as much by an unplanned pregnancy and shotgun wedding as the fact that they're a pretty terrible band. The third member of the group, Joe, actually does end up with a successful career as a musician, but he remains close to Pam and Daniel, helping to raise their daughter, Flora, until...

( Spoilers )

The rest of the book dwells a lot on themes of generational divides - millennial Flora, her Gen X parents, and baby boomer grandparents - and a lot on modern politics, mostly re: the futility thereof. The last chunk of plot is set against the backdrop of the 2016 election, so that was... ugh.

To read next

My new goal is to finish Nicholas Nickleby by the end of this year; I'm about halfway through, so I feel like this is achievable? I also just got my turn for Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent on Libby, which I completely forgot I'd put on hold back in September.

Current Music: 21st Century Breakdown - Green Day

Recently read

96. Read the memoir Know My Name by Chanel Miller, the young woman known as ‘Emily Doe’ in the infamous People v. Turner case a few years back. This was a super tough book to read, emotionally, but I couldn’t put it down.

97. (Re-)read Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl, which I’d read in 4th or 5th grade. I had forgotten everything about it except for one scene in which the main character longs for bronze boots— after re-reading the whole book, I have no idea why that one detail stuck with me, but I’ve thought of it about once a year since, always idly wondering what the book was called and who it was by, with no success until last week, when I saw a gif of a scene from that new TV show Dickinson, featuring Louisa May Alcott as a character, and it suddenly popped into my head that she had been the author and I was able to track it down easily from there. Funny how memories work, isn’t it?

ANYWAY. It was a really charming book, following a pair of childhood friends – Polly Milton, the titular old-fashioned girl, and the wealthier, worldlier Fanny Shaw; it’s all very “country mouse, city mouse” – from the first time Polly visits the Shaws in Boston, unconsciously helping to soothe tempers and bring their family closer together through her sweet disposition and kindness, to their young adulthood, when Polly moves to Boston to work as a music teacher and Fanny begins to weary of life as a socialite.

It had a moral message about Simplicity and Caring About Others and Honest Hard Work that was about as subtle as a bonk to the head – occasionally taking on the tone of a Goofus & Gallant comic strip – but the characters got to be people rather than just symbols or stock characters, which kept it from getting too precious to be bearable. In the second half of the novel, Polly finds a social circle of other independent young women who support each other professionally and personally - including a pair of artists who live together in “true Damon and Pythias style,” one of whom is a sculptress making a statue of “the coming woman ... bigger, lovelier, and more imposing than any we see nowadays” - so obviously I was very delighted by all of that. I also genuinely loved the childhood friendship turned romance between Polly and Fanny’s brother Tom.

Currently reading

98. Diana Wynne Jones’ Dark Lord of Derkholm, which - to quote the Tumblr post that inspired me to read it - “asks: what if the person who stumbles into Fantasyland isn’t some wide-eyed bookworm child, but one of the Koch brothers? Then it cheerfully places us 40 years past that inciting incident, and as a result, Fantasyland is now a colonized Disney property” on the brink of societal and environmental collapse. Just some light escapism from all the depressing stuff happening in the real world, you know?