Book Reviews #26 and #27
On Lucy's recommendation I read March by Geraldine Brooks. It did not disappoint. I loved it. How could I not being such a fan of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I loved being back in the lives of the March family again. The book tells the story of Mr. March (a shadowy minor character in Little Women) who is the protaganist of this novel. It tell the story of Mr. March while he was away from his "little women" being a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War.
From Publishers Weekly:
Brooks novel imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or "contraband." His narrative begins with cheerful letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to the plantations. In between, we learn of March's earlier life: his whirlwind courtship of quick-tempered Marmee, his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau and the surprising cause of his family's genteel poverty. When a Confederate attack on the contraband farm lands March in a Washington hospital, sick with fever and guilt, the first-person narrative switches to Marmee, who describes a different version of the years past and an agonized reaction to the truth she uncovers about her husband's life...Through the shattered dreamer March, the passion and rage of Marmee and a host of achingly human minor characters, Brooks's affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War and the difficulty of living honestly with the knowledge of human suffering.
This book was a great read. I loved the background information on Captain March and the beloved Marmee...who is described not just as the uber-mother but as a flesh and blood woman with weaknesses and flaws. March as well is sometimes heroic and sometimes weak and despairing. I thought the writing was intelligent and wonderful. I would highly recommend this book.
My rating: VERY GOOD.
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton was our book club selection for this month picked by Andrea. I don't think I would've read this book on my own. Maybe in high school... when I was in my "South Africa/Anti-Apartheid" phase. Amnesty International was constantly in the news. I was a member of the Amnesty Club in high school and spent many an afternoon writing letters to free Nelson Mandela. I was obsessed with Stephen Biko and read books, articles, and watched movies about the slain South African human rights leader. But as the years have passed...Nelson Mandela was released from prison...and I haven't read much or paid much attention to South Africa...unfortunately.
From Amazon.com: Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. The Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg... He is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, Gertrude, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, Absalom, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned.
I liked this book. I loved it's themes of love and the power of forgiveness. I loved it's lyrical and haunting prose. I love that South Africa is a vibrant and living character. But I was, at first, put off a bit by the writing style...while beautiful it is also detached. You don't really get inside the minds and hearts of the characters. It is as if you are observing them through a pane of glass...we never REALLY know the thoughts of Stephen Kumalo...we observe him, his conversations, and his actions. It took awhile for me to get used to that. But by the end of the book I had such a profound love and empathy for the umfundisi Kumalo that he broke my heart.
In the book we see two sides of the same tragic story...the side of the father of the slain white human rights activist and the side of the murderer's father. It pained me to see the umfundisi through Jarvis' eyes...in his shabby faded black clothes and dirty collar. But while a sad book it also leaves the reader feeling hopeful (despite of what I knew continued to happen in the future in South Africa) and Stephen Kumalo remained a figure of hope for the redemption of his beloved country...the inherent truth that love is stronger than fear.
I found this book deeply moving. I would definitely recommend it. I rate it as: GOOD.
(I read these two books back to back. I read Cry first and then March. The juxtaposition of racism and intolerance in two different countries and in two different time periods for the same race was interesting and unbelievably tragic.)
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