"Little Women": A man's side of the story. "March" by Geraldine Brooks. Must Read!

If I had not read so many wonderful books this year, I'd have called this novel Best for the Year! It may be just that!

The author, Geraldine Brooks, composes luminous prose; her descriptions set the reader in the midst of the action or scene; time and space dissolve as she shares her stories. She's very talented.

Brooks has a way of focusing on some little corner of the larger world, like 17th Century rural England in a plague year ("Year of Wonders") and letting the reader live there, too. "March" brings the Father of Louisa May Alcott's novel to life. (The character of was based in large part on research about Alcott's own father, a man well-known in the 19th Century for his reform beliefs). His experiences, imagined by Brooks, enrich the story told in the original novel.

If you never read "Little Women", that's OK. I read parts, parts were read to me as a kid. All of my life, films were made; they each re enact the home front Civil War story, starring that decades' pretty starlets cast as Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (?). It is probably about time for another version be made.

My plan is to read all of Geraldine Brooks' works, as they cross my path. She writes non-fiction as well as fiction.