Little Women - Classics Review

Goodreads:  Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Rating: Not for Me

Source: Purchased

Description:  Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

Genre: Middle Grade - Classic

Why I Picked This Book:  Eight Cousins and Jo's Boys were two of my favorite books as a kid but somehow I never read what I consider to be her most well known book.  

My Thoughts:  Before starting this book I couldn't remember if I had read this one before or not.  I knew I had read Little Men and Jo's Boys was one of my favorites but pretty much everything I remember from Little Women itself could just have easily have come from the movie as the book.  After reading this I'm pretty sure I read about a third of it before I gave up.  To be honest that's kind of what I wanted to do this time around as well.

The story itself is fine.  The 4 sisters are different which provides some interesting lessons and story lines.  I also enjoyed seeing two very distinct levels of income with the wealthy Laurences and Moffetts against the very poor Marches and the even poorer Hummels.  I don't feel like many children's books really have that complexity and I liked that the good and bad of both are shown. I also liked the length over which the story took place and that we really get to see the girls grow up over the course of the book.

But there were a number of things that didn't work for me.  The main thing being that there is a lot of moralizing.  Pages and pages of it.  I can see why 9 year old me finally gave up on this one.  I expect most children's fiction from this time period to teach a lesson and I have reread other Alcott books as an adult and was not surprised to find that but it's almost overpowering in this book.  I think that's the primary reason why the book feels so long is because at least a third of it is lectures about being good and humble and other very good virtues that are talked about at length.  This may work if it was a one chapter a night bedtime story read but trying to read it in extended sittings got a bit tiresome.  Also, Amy is just the worst.

Part of my problem may have been that I have no childhood attachment to this book so I don't feel like I'm revisiting old friends like I do when I open an L.M. Montgomery novel.  Part of my problem may have been the sheer length of the novel which in my Kindle version was about 500 pages.  But whatever the issue this is one classic that didn't work for me as a child or an adult.  I am glad I read it but it definitely won't be a book I'll revisit.