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Readers' Comments
We welcome your responses to our North Reading Reads 2011
selection, March, by Geraldine Brooks or any other book
you have read and would like to share your reactions about. Please email to mnr@mvlc.org
and we'll include your comments.
Most responses to March have been positive. People have enjoyed the setting, the connection to Little Women. They feel they've learned something from the book. We have heard some comments about the book being too violent. Quite a few people felt the first chapter was hard to get through, but once they'd read further, they really enjoyed and appreciated it. On re-reading, the first chapter is fine.
It was an amazing book. What a way to get a lot of different perspectives on what was happening - how medicine was practiced, conditions at the plantations in Virginia. I hadn't focused on the fact that 60% of the battles were fought in Virginia. The John Brown story, how one man might have earned money and lost it, what women were doing and thinking. Another look at Henry Thoreau (we walk around Walden Pond regularly in the season for it.) And Emerson too.
Ruth Clark, Hood School
Comments from the North Reading Book Discussion Club, Wednesday, February 23:
"I'm a great fan of Geraldine Brooks... She delves into the subject without being boring and she writes beautifully ...March stars off with a bang...read it fast...excellent...Glad Brooks won the Pulitzer prize...I like it when an author takes a subject and looks at it from a different point of view...the first chapter turned some people away, but on re-reading, the chapter was fine...audio version, listening to it, helped me get into it...would like to know what southerners think of the book...Brooks portrayed her characters very well, especially Mr. March...Marmee is stoic, patriotic...Grace is so upright and dignified...author did a nice job with relationships, with how complex they are on the plantation...found it violent and looked for the more touching passages, such as on p. 41, when Mr. March examines the locks of his daughter's and wife's hair...book is very detailed, the wounds, the suffering and deaths...Mr. March does fine in his own enclave in Concord, but not as well in the real world... good character development..."
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Re-reading Little Women after many years provided an insight for March. I'm glad I did it. A New England "girl" reading March in Virginia is a very different experience, beliee me."
Comments from the Friends' Evening Books Group, of Tuesday, March 1:
I really enjoyed the references to Thoreau...reading Geraldine Brooks' comments about how she did her research was very interesting..the book stars off with war, I thought it would be like Little Women, I was surprised by the first chapter...the book was done skillfully enough that it wouldn't matter if you hadn't read Little women...my perception of Mr. March went up and down like a roller coaster; sometimes he seemed courageous, at other times he was a coward...I was put off by the beginning of the book, and by March, at first, but ended up enjoying the novel very much... March was an idealist. I stuck with the book and then it began to talk about relationships...the section on Oak Landing was very moving... liberated slaves were still on the plantation; they were supposed to be paid, but weren't, a vision of the social upheaval at the time...March was difficult -- for so many people..a different look at Little Women...Marmee was so outspoken, but then, not always, always, she was accepting at the end...scenes in Blank Hospital were powerful...the nursing profession started in the Civil War...Geraldine Brooks is an excellent writer; each novel is different; she's hard to pigeonhole.
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