Brooks, Geraldine "March"

Brooks, Geraldine "March. A Love Story in a Time of War" - 2006

Who hasn't read "Little Women" and wouldn't mind reading more about the March family. Well, here's your chance.

I am not a big fan of any "sequels" written by other people than the author him/herself, especially not decades or even centuries later. However, Geraldine Brooks is an exception, she writes her novels more like biographies. As in this case. The protagonist of her story is John March, the father of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, Marmee's beloved husband. A lot of his work is told in the background in "Little Women", here we can see the man himself, his ideals, his politics, he was an abolitionist as well as an advocate for women's rights, a dreamer of a better world. As Louisa May Alcott has really told the story of her family, this is the story of her father, Amos Bronson Alcott. He was quite a remarkable man, way ahead of his time and his story is worth reading.

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From the back cover:

"As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched, March is an extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history.

From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. To evoke him, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father - a friend and confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In her telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through.

Spanning the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott’s optimistic children’s tale to portray the moral complexity of war, and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism - and by a dangerous and illicit attraction. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks’s place as an internationally renowned author of historical fiction."

Geraldine Brooks received the Pulitzer Prize for "March" in 2006.

Kemal, Yaşar "The Birds Have Also Gone"

Kemal, Yaşar "The Birds Have Also Gone" (Turkish: Kuşlar da Gitti) - 1978

Even though the title of this book talks about the birds only, this short novel is about the boys who catch them. Apparently, in Turkey, people would buy birds from kids who caught them and give them back their freedom in order for them to fly to paradise and there wait for them.

But times are changing, people are not religious any more, they don't buy the birds, so the boys are losing their business.

An interesting story not just about the boys from Istanbul but about the ever changing times, the shattering of dreams, and about the streets of Istanbul. A colourful city, very well described in the story told by a narrator who appears in the story himself, who tries to help the boys.

This book strongly represents the oriental side of literature. Highly recommendable.

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From the back cover:

"There is an ancient Turkish tradition that promises the person who frees a small bird a place in paradise. Three boys set up a business of catching birds to enable people to free them, but city people are now sceptical and tragedy lies in wait for the boys. The author also wrote 'Memed, My Hawk'."

I also read "The Drumming-Out", just as interesting.

Yaşar Kemal received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 1997.

Carey, Peter "Oscar and Lucinda"

Carey, Peter "Oscar and Lucinda" - 1988

Interesting story, set in one of my favourite centuries, the 19th, told in a vivid yet pleasant way, the life of people trying to fit into a life they had no idea about. Oscar, a young English clergyman, and Lucinda, a rich Australian girl form a "good house" could not come from more different backgrounds but find common ground quite easily. The novel is full of information about life during that time without being stereotypical. It has a lot of originality, is a pleasure to read.

Peter Carey is a gifted writer and I also enjoyed his non-fiction "True History of the Kelly Gang".

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From the back cover:

"Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written book, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.

Young Oscar, denied the heavenly fruit of a Christmas pudding by his cruelly stern father, forever renounces his father's religion in favor of the Anglican Church. 'Dear God,' Oscar prays, 'if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, smite him!'

Lucinda's childhood trauma involves a beautiful doll bought by her struggling mother with savings from the jam jar; in a misguided attempt to tame the doll's unruly curls, young Lucinda mutilates her treasure beyond repair.

Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develop a guilty passion for gambling. Oscar plays the horses while at school, and Lucinda, now an orphaned heiress, finds comfort in a game of cards with an odd collection of acquaintances.

When the two finally meet, on board a ship bound for New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming (but unexpressed) mutual affection. Their final high-stakes folly - transporting a crystal palace of a church across (literally) godforsaken terrain - strains plausibility, and events turn ghastly as Oscar plays out his bid for Lucinda's heart.

Yet even the unconvincing plot turns are made up for by Carey's rich prose and the tale's unpredictable outcome. Although love proves to be the ultimate gamble for Oscar and Lucinda, the story never strays too far from the terrible possibility that even the most thunderstruck lovers can remain isolated in parallel lives."

Peter Carey won the Booker Prize for "Oscar and Lucinda" in 1988.

Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The African"

Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The African" (French: L'Africain) - 2004

The French Nobel prize winner wrote this autobiographical essay mainly about his childhood in Africa where he met his father who spent most of his life there. A good description of the African landscape and not only an autobiography about the author but also about his father whom he got to know as a stranger.

With this book, he seems to want to get closer to a father he never got to know well during this youth. His way to his father is over his beloved Africa, a continent that has formed his childhood. He shows this best in this quote: "I am forever yearning to go back to Africa, to my childhood memory. To the source of my feelings, to that which molded my character."

Wonderful writing, I'm not surprised he was a Nobel laureate. An author who truly deserves this recognition.

This will not be the last book I have read by J.M.G. Le Clézio.

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From the back cover:

"The African is a short autobiographical account of a pivotal moment in Nobel-Prize-winning author J. M. G. Le Clézio's childhood. In 1948, young Le Clézio, with his mother and brother, left behind a still-devastated Europe to join his father, a military doctor in Nigeria, from whom he'd been separated by the war. In Le Clézio's characteristically intimate, poetic voice, the narrative relates both the dazzled enthusiasm the child feels at discovering newfound freedom in the African savannah and his torment at discovering the rigid authoritarian nature of his father. The power and beauty of the book reside in the fact that both discoveries occur simultaneously.

While primarily a memoir of the author's boyhood, The African is also Le Clézio's attempt to pay a belated homage to the man he met for the first time in Africa at age eight and was never quite able to love or accept. His reflections on the nature of his relationship to his father become a chapeau bas to the adventurous military."

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization", received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Oates, Joyce Carol "Black Girl/White Girl"

Oates, Joyce Carol "Black Girl/White Girl" - 2006

Genna Meade is the daughter of a radical activist lawyer, descending from a family with a large history of civil rights fighters. She is born into a highly political family. When she starts studying at a college which one of her forefathers founded, she shares her room with Minette, the "black girl of the story, the daughter of an eminent minister, very much settled in her faith as opposed to Genna who was brought up atheist. Minette becomes the target of racial attacks and Genna reminisces about their story 15 years later.

A highly interesting book, I love Joyce Carol Oates, and she didn't disappoint with this story. This is not just a story about racism, it's the story of girls growing up, following the way their parents started them on or turning into another direction.

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From the back cover:

"Fifteen years ago, in 1975, Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent, terrible death. Minette Swift had been a fiercely individualistic scholarship student, an assertive - even prickly - personality, and one of the few black girls at an exclusive women's liberal arts college near Philadelphia. By contrast, Genna was a quiet, self-effacing teenager from a privileged upper-class home, self-consciously struggling to make amends for her own elite upbringing. When, partway through their freshman year, Minette suddenly fell victim to an increasing torrent of racist harassment and vicious slurs - from within the apparent safety of their tolerant, 'enlightened' campus - Genna felt it her duty to protect her roommate at all costs.

Now, as Genna reconstructs the months, weeks, and hours leading up to Minette's tragic death, she is also forced to confront her own identity within the social framework of that time. Her father was a prominent civil defense lawyer whose radical politics - including defending anti-war terrorists wanted by the FBI - would deeply affect his daughter's outlook on life, and later challenge her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world.Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of 'black' and 'white,' of race and civil rights in post-Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time."

Find links to all my other Joyce Carol Oates reviews here.

Morgan Dawson, Sarah "A Confederate Girl's Diary"

Morgan Dawson, Sarah "A Confederate Girl's Diary" - 1913

If you enjoy stories like "Gone with the Wind", you will love this book. Sarah Morgan Dawson lived from 1842 to 1909. She was born into a well-to-do family who had slaves like any other rich people. Her diary is a great description of the civil war and what it did to all the people who lived during that time.

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From the back cover:

"Sarah Morgan Dawson lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at the outbreak of the American Civil War. In March 1862, she began to record her thoughts about the war in a diary -- thoughts about the loss of friends killed in battle and the occupation of her home by Federal troops. Her devotion to the South was unwavering and her emotions real and uncensored. A true classic."

Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair"

Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair" (Thursday Next 1) - 2001

I discovered this book because one of our book club members recommended it as a companion to our book club read "Jane Eyre". What a fantastic suggestion.

It is so difficult to put a label on this, it's' a detective story, a thriller, classic reading, alternate history, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, philosophy, religion, a love for word play, weird names, language (he even mentions Esperanto), satire, even a little romance mixed in, you name it, it's in here.

I loved his love for language, his word play. The funniest names appear. Not only is our heroine called Thursday Next, her boss is called Braxton Hicks, she works with Bowden Cable and Victor Analogy, then there is Paige Turner, and we don't want to forget the evil guys Jack Schitt as well as Acheron Hades and his brother Styx (I've been wondering what their father's name would be). With the help of a sort of "time machine", the heroine ventures into a classic novel and helps rewrite the end.

Hilarious! The Rocky Horror Picture Show makes its appearance as a Richard III play, there is a Global Standard Deity religion, various fans of classic authors carry out their feuds, one funny idea chases the other.

The advantage of alternate history - you don't have to be accurate. The disadvantage of science fiction - you have to be consequent. Jasper Fforde manages to combine the two and make the most interesting plot out of this. I especially enjoyed the many allusions to classic literature. Surreal.

I would definitely suggest to read "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë before this book. Not only is this one certainly more interesting if you've read the original but it also contains a lot of spoilers, you really don't want to know the end of the novel before you embark on it.

Still, I loved the book and will explore Thursday's' adventures further in "Lost in a Good Book", "The Well of Lost Plots", "Something Rotten", "First Among Sequels", "One of our Thursdays is Missing" and "The Woman Who Died a Lot".

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of 'Jane Eyre'. In this world there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, a great interest in all things literary - and a woman called Thursday Next. 

In this utterly original and wonderfully funny first novel, Fforde has created a fiesty, loveable heroine and a plot of such richness and ingenuity that it will take your breath away."