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Louisa May Alcott (2010)

by Susan Cheever(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

141656991X (ISBN13: 9781416569916)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: I've always loved Little Women and assumed that Louisa May Alcott based the book heavily on her own biography. This book indicates that Little Women is the story of the home life Alcott would have preferred. It was difficult to read about her father, Bronson, a self-made idealist with little formal education who failed on many fronts in his life, making life difficult for his wife and four daughters. Reading about the family's friendship with now-famous Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau was a high point for this former American literature teacher. I enjoyed reading the book, although I should have taken more seriously the subtitle: A Personal Biography. Cheever (daughter of American author John Cheever) uses the occasion of writing about Alcott's life to include ... moredetails from her own life as well as broad generalizations about life, writing, and history, which created speed bumps for this reader. Here is the most glaring example (page 177): "If God is a storyteller and history is written by a single intelligence, the events of March and April of 1865 suggest that He turned His computer over to Shakespeare for a while and went out to take a coffee break." Overall, it was a very readable and well-done biography, but some more editing would have strengthened the book.
review 2: A fascinating, thoughtful biography of Alcott and examination of her times, not just for lovers of Alcott’s books. Read it not for the biographical details but the questions it raises. Cheever asks: Did Alcott have a happy life? She worked hard most of her life, had no children, never married, and had little time to enjoy the money she earned, spending it primarily on taking care of her family. Cheever says: “…Louisa May Alcott had a happy life but..she had something more important –a life and a body of work thatare still fresh and enlightening today.” Cheever goes on to say that the choices she made ”are still the problems and choices that most women have today. “ Worth discussing. less

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