Review: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I tried to read this book months ago, got 60 pages in and then didn’t pick it up for months. I think you have to be in the right headspace to read this book; you have to be prepared to read something very dense because even though in the version I read there were 396 pages, the text was small and the pages were large. On my second attempt, I think I got past those first 60 pages because by that point I had watched the 2019 film adaptation and therefore knew what was coming. Without that knowledge, apart from what had been spoiled years before in a Friends episode, I think it would have taken me even longer to read this book or I might not have even been able to finish it.

Having said that, and comparisons will be made to that film adaptation because I have little else to go off, I cared much more for Beth upon reading the book and may have been tempted to shed a tear. I enjoyed the playfulness of the friendship between Laurie and Jo and found the descriptions in the book really pleasing to read because in most other classics that I have read most of the text is speech and to me the story has less effect because of that. Contrary to a lot of opinions I have heard, I really liked the relationship between Amy and Laurie. As sad as it was that he and Jo weren’t together, I could also completely understand it; if their relationship had been allowed to continue there would have been a severe disbalance in romantic love between the pair and therefore Amy and Laurie were presented in the later chapters as a much better match.

Aside from the density, there were other downsides to the book. I didn’t like Meg as a character, especially after she got married. Obviously, times were different but her role entirely being encompassed by children and housekeeping while her husband went to other places for entertainment made me equal parts angry, that he shouldn’t have more of a role, and bored, because it seemed nothing of real substance. Also, the end of the book seemed to race through events far too quickly. In comparison to the earlier chapters which had taken their time, before you knew it, Amy and Laurie were married, then Jo and Mr Bhaer were and then suddenly they were running a school for boys. If the rest of the book had matched that pace it would have been fine but because the rest of the book took its time, it felt like a rushed job.