The Little Women
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A delightfully clever contemporary novel inspired by the Louisa May Alcott classic
In Katharine Weber's third novel, The Little Women, three adolescent sisters--Meg, Jo and Amy--are shocked when they discover their mother's affair, but are truly devastated by their father's apparently easy forgiveness of her. Shattered by their parents' failure to live up to the moral standards and values of the family, the two younger sisters leave New York (and their private school) and move to Meg's apartment in New Haven, where Meg is a junior at Yale. They enroll in the local inner-city public high school, and, divorced from their parents, they try to make a life with Meg as their surrogate mother.
Written in the form of an autobiographical novel by Joanna, the middle sister, the pages of The Little Women are punctuated by comments from the "real" Meg and Amy. Their notes and Jo's replies form a second narrative, as they argue about the "truth" of the novel.
Why do readers insist on searching for the autobiographical elements of fiction? When does a novelist go too far in mulching actual experience for a novel? What rights, if any, does a writer have to grant the people in her life and story?
An ingenious combination of classic storytelling in a contemporary mode, The Little Women confirms Katharine Weber's reputation as a writer who "astutely explores the gap between perception and reality." (The New York Times Book Review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swaddling her contemporary retread of the Louisa May Alcott classic in layers of self-referential debate about novel writing, Weber (The Music Lesson, etc.) squeezes the life out of this tale of three runaway sisters. Meg, Joanna and Amy Green (a pet turtle named Beth was regrettably short-lived) are like their Alcott predecessors in more than name. Meg, 20, is the discreet, responsible older sister; Amy, 15, is the spoiled youngest; and Joanna, 17, is the middle child, the tomboy and the novel's narrator. They grow up in New York City in cozy upper-middle-class bliss, their perfect family the envy of all. But their smug contentment is shattered when they discover their mother's affair; their father's blas reaction is almost worse. In protest, Joanna and Amy move in with Meg and her roommate, Teddy Bell, at their off-campus apartment near Yale University. This far-fetched premise does give Weber opportunity to modernize the original lesbianism and birth control become plot points, and the sisters discover mother Janet's affair through an incriminating e-mail. But Weber's real experiment is in narrative deconstruction. Comments from Meg and Amy pepper the text, contesting the structure of Joanna's story and arguing with her about her perspective and her version of reality. This might have been contentious fun, but the plodding, predictable narrative commentary begs to be skimmed, and the theorizing leaks into the story itself. To cap it all off, Weber's reworking of pivotal Alcott scenes is at once slipshod and too literal. Her rushed treatment of Teddy's hopeless bid for Joanna's love, in particular, falls flat. Better to reread the original or even one of Alcott's own sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys.
