March by Geraldine Brooks

I'm a little behind on my book blogging! I've read a few great books since my last post, but for some reason I can't get my butt in the chair to review them. But here it goes. I'm back!

After I finished Unaccustomed Earth by the perfect Jhumpa Lahiri, I took some time to choose my next reading venture. I tried Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff, but something about the narrator's voice irked me. I just couldn't get into it, although I admit I didn't give it much of a chance to catch me. I strongly considered The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I *will* read that one. It was in my lap, along with Ms. Brooks' March. Alas, I picked up March first, and I was instantly hooked. What a great writer. She really has the magic...which is why I should have enjoyed this book more than I did. Don't get me wrong. I give it at least 4.5 out of 5 stars, and that makes me uncomfortable because I can't articulate any problems with it. The only possible explanation for why I don't consider it perfect is that it's too much of a good thing. Does that make sense?

For those of you who don't know, March is a brand new angle of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Shockingly, I haven't read the old classic, but I've seen the most recent (Winona Ryder, Claire Danes) film adaptation numerous times. March tells the story of the beloved, absent father who, during the action in LW, was off preaching to gospel to Civil War soldiers. The story oscillates between his past and his horrifying ordeal on the battlefront, his lustful longings for a slave at a Virginia plantation, his yearning to teach young slave children to read and write, and the survivor-guilt-inspired self-loathing. The narrative style is unique in that it contains letters to his wife, Marmee, but the reader knows he is lying (or at least telling partial truths) to protect his wife from the truth he himself cannot handle. It's a great idea and a beautifully told story, but it just got old for me somewhere in the middle. I found the character at bit whiny as he lamented the state of human rights in the antebellum South. March was a man of high, Quaker ideals and he repeatedly ran up against people, Southern cotton farmers and Northerners looking to make a buck in the war-ravaged South) who just wanted to see slaves stay ignorant and in the fields. As much as I loved March and his cause, I just got tired of it. Yes, there were few good men in America at that time. I got it--early on. Yet this book kept hitting me over the head with it.

Look, I'm not saying March didn't deserve the Pulitzer which was bestowed upon it in 2006. But in my opinion the plot becomes a bit plodding in the middle. Perhaps some will say I would have better appreciation for it if I'd read Little Women, but I don't think so. I think Brooks got caught up in the beauty of the language and little-known aspects of the Civil War that she didn't realize the character development was on hiatus for a good 150 pages of this novel.