March, the vegan, environmentalist, abolitionist preacher of ill-defined religious beliefs, is something of an archetype of the 21st century liberal, and his dilemmas have a certain resonance in today’s political world. Nevertheless, March is a success on its own terms as a portrait of a man, in three dimensions with all his follies and foibles, who transcends his constructed place as observer to history in the making
Like most historical novels, there’s some contrivance in the set up and an overriding sentimentality to the proceedings. It’s a strong novel, with dramatic set pieces and genuine emotional impact. Alcott’s ideals, radical even for the New England of his day, and his friendships with the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau (ascribed to March in the book), provide the philosophical underpinning to his actions. The hero of the story is as much the very real Bronson Alcott (father to Louisa) as it is the fictional March - Brooks combines them into one person for the purposes of the novel. The overlap between the two narratives is minimal and the focus on March, rather than his daughters, means that Brooks has the freedom to develop a unique narrative and voice.
Brooks, already a popular writer, doesn’t seem to need Little Women‘s reflected glow, and it becomes apparent that Alcott’s book is a mere starting point to explore bigger themes.
This immediately sets off alarm bells for this reviewer, as interpolations and extrapolations from popular novels meet with mixed success. March tells the story of the eponymous absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and his travails as a chaplain to Union troops during the war.
The apology is appropriate, because with March, Brooks has not only joined the ranks of Civil War nuts, but with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction under her belt, it just might be the making of her as a novelist. In her afterword to March, Geraldine Brooks apologises to husband Tony Horwitz for her years of indifference to his civil war obsessions (well documented in his outstanding Confederates in the Attic).
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