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March
A Novel
by Geraldine Brooks


5.3

based on 15 reviews
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based on 17 votes
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Official Publisher Site

This Civil War-era love story is centered on the character of March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women.

Viking, 288 pages
03/03/2005
$24.95

ISBN: 0670033359

Fiction
Historical Fiction

NOTES:
Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart

I believe Geraldine Brooks' new novel, "March," is a very great book. I believe it breathes new life into the historical fiction genre, the borrowing-a-character-from-the-deep-past phenomenon, the old I-shall-tell-you-a-story-through-letters tradition. I believe it honors the best of the imagination. I give it a hero's welcome. [6 Mar. 2005, C1]

Los Angeles Times Heller McAlpin

Geraldine Brooks' novel is a moving and inspirational tour de force. [6 Mar 2005, p.R4]

Publishers Weekly

Brooks's affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War.

Washington Post Karen Joy Fowler

March is an altogether successful book, casting a spell that lasts much longer than the reading of it.

Sydney Morning Herald Michelle Griffin

It is all the more remarkable that Geraldine Brooks could come to this well-worn, well-loved material and find a new story to tell, one that will make readers return to Little Women with a different understanding.

San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen

It's a sterling example of a brazen genre -- the novel that burrows inside another novel, borrowing some of its characters and situations but, in this uncommon case, returning to the host book a liveliness that age and fashion had sapped.

The New Yorker

The novel, expertly capturing the speech and attitudes of the time, forms an ingenious counterpoint to Alcott’s.

USA Today Anita Sama

Imaginative extrapolations, done successfully as in March, illuminate the original works and allow tangential characters to claim their own full lives.

Wall Street Journal John Freeman

It feels honorable, elegant and true -- an adult coda to the plangent idealism of "Little Women."

The Economist

Louisa May Alcott would be well pleased.

Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles

The great philosophical and military clashes of 19th-century America come excitingly alive in this carefully researched novel.

Atlantic Monthly Christina Schwarz

Brooks's narrative is remarkably tight. Whereas much literary fiction wallows in digression, here every scrap of information propels the story forward.

Booklist Marta Segal Block

The nineteenth-century writing style is accurate and entertaining, but it may be too ornate for some readers. [1 Feb. 2005, p. 938]

Kirkus Reviews

The battle scenes are riveting, the human drama flat.

The New York Times Book Review Thomas Mallon

Brooks is capable of strong writing about the natural world and nicely researched effects about the human one... but the book she has produced makes a distressing contribution to recent trends in historical fiction, which, after a decade or so of increased literary and intellectual weight, seems to be returning to its old sentimental contrivances and costumes.

The average user rating for this book is 5.3 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Beverly gave it a1:
I could not finish this book. I felt it was very contrived. I did not like the battle scenes since they were total fiction and so bloody.

Shirley E gave it an8:
Having lived through in Viet Nam as a wife of a physican/minister, I can closely identify with the trials and emotions of home and the moral and obligations of military service. Family responsibilies vs any career is often in conflict.

Marie H gave it a4:
Ms Brooks has chosen to use the worst of the Southern mentality and the most honorable of the Northern mentality in it time to characture both sides. She could have been more subtle to better tell her story.

Lindsay C gave it a0:
I hated this book.

Janice R gave it a4:
This author knows how to write as far as descriptions go. But the story was trite, full of cliches, and overly dramatic. More like a romance novel than "literary" fiction.

James S gave it a4:
disappointed. Loved her first book, but this one has lost me in the plot, and lacks real depth in the characterisation, it seems rather flat.

gerri r gave it a9:
an intereting insight into the workings of the mind and how the same event can be viewed from different viewpoints. A very enjoyable read.

March A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

March
A Novel
by Geraldine Brooks