Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

This is the story of the March family, set in the 1800s in the USA. Mr March has gone away to be a chaplain in the war, leaving behind his wife and four daughters. They are only just surviving financially, and the book opens with the well-known sentence, spoken by one of the daughters, 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents!' It's a character-driven novel about growing up, rather than a story with significant plot. Each chapter covers a different incident, featuring one or more of the girls and their friends, sometimes falling into scrapes, sometimes showing extreme generosity, ...  Read the complete review

"Little Women" is one of those texts deemed to be classic children's literature, so I may make myself unpopular by attacking it. Ah well. I first read the book when I was quite young and, like most readers was enchanted by the depiction of warm family life as the four March sisters and their mother struggle to cope with Mr March's absence and their own poverty. They are I guess middle class by our standars, but war brings deprivations, and theAmerican civial war was no exception. It is a book of its time and as a represenatation fo ideals and aspirations, is really quite interesting, however, thos ideas are very dated, quite sexist, fairly ...  Read the complete review

How many different emotions do we go through when we open the first page of a new book... boredom if it's a school book and a chore, anticipation...if it's a book that's been highly recommended, curiosity....if it's a book on a subject we want to learn. We all know the feeling, some books we labour through, some we forget within weeks of finishing and others stay in our memories forever. Little Women is the latter. I first read it as a child and my initial feelings as I read the first page were anticipation and joy. I was completely captivated by the emerging March family in their large gracious home,awaiting the return of their father who was ...  Read the complete review

I was quite old before I read Little Women, but I immediately wished I had read it earlier. Forget the films or the abridged versions, this full and complete version is the only thing that will do. It is simply beautiful and is something that I think all young girls should read or have read to them as soon as they are old enough to understand it. ~~~Plot~~~ The book, by Louisa May Alcott, tells the story of the March family, a mother and father who have four young girls who are entering their teenage years and have many issues to deal with. Meg has great social ambition and loves fine clothes but finds her desires thwarted by the March family's lack ...  Read the complete review

4th August 2001 Last night about half nine I finally finished the book that I had waited all summer to start ~ Harry Potter # 4. Not something I’ll be op ing on at the present moment in time, may be in the near future? Not relevant to Little Women I hear you cry, and yes, I do know, I’m getting to it!!! So after finishing one and eager to start another I trudged upstairs unwillingly for I knew what task lied ahead. I had to choose another book. Arghhhhhhh !! Easy if you have maybe 4-5 in a pile waiting to be read, not so if you have about 80 of the things. Oh don’t get me wrong, I love books, I love reading, but I HATE making decisions. ...  Read the complete review