The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

February 22, 2010
McNees lightly imagines the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women
has enjoyed generations-long success. The story begins with a 20-year-old Louisa unhappily moving with her family from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where her Transcendentalist philosopher father pursues a life sans material pleasure. Louisa, meanwhile, plans on saving enough money to return to Boston and pursue a career as a writer. Then she meets the handsome and charming Joseph Singer, who stirs up strong emotions in Louisa. Not wanting to admit that she is attracted to him, Louisa responds to Joseph with defensiveness and anger until, of course, she can no longer deny her feelings and becomes torn between her desires and her dreams. While certainly charming, the simply told, straightforward narrative reads like YA fiction. It'll do the trick as a pleasant diversion for readers with fond memories of Alcott's work, but the lack of gravity prevents it from becoming anything greater.

Louisa May Alcott's fans have long speculated that the romance between Jo and Laurie in LITTLE WOMEN might have been based on some unknown aspect of Alcott's real-life experience. Here the author weaves a fictional story out of that speculation. Emily Card's authentic performance is akin to eavesdropping on Alcott's private journal entries, which are blended with the fictional aspects of the story. Card's voice captures Louisa's passion for writing and her independent spirit, which, in her mind, means foregoing marriage with her fictional lover, Joseph Singer. In the novel their romance is intricately linked to Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS, poems that favor their liberal views. Card shifts smoothly from the familiar voices of Louisa's family to her father's Transcendentalist theories, which mire the family in poverty. The combination of Alcott's words and Card's reading is magic. K.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine