There are few books that I finish reading and truly regret not having read them earlier in life, and this is one of them. However, I’m also glad I haven’t read it previously as I truly doubt I would’ve appreciated the story or the characters as much as I did.
I expected the reading to take longer than the last few books I read, but it didn’t. I discovered Alcott’s editors specifically requested a book for young women and this so she wrote Little Women.
I identified most with Jo, as I feel most people do but I could be wrong. Perhaps it is her often times uncouth and startlingly simple view of the world, of right and wrong, of black and white, but her character provides a great antithesis to all of the other sisters. And although she changes and has her own faults, to me, she shows the most humanness. And Alcott summed this up saying, “But, you see, Jo wasn’t a heroine, she was only a struggling human girl like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless or energetic, as the mood suggested” (loc 5977).
Click here to continue reading and to see the recommendation and quotes from the novel.
As I mentioned earlier I decided to bump this higher on my list as I missed a trivia question and realized how woefully lacking French literature (Classic) is from my lists and my life.
“Sex everywhere: it was slopping over, a neap tide that swept the props from under the city.” (204)