23 - Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen

Holt, Henry & Co, 2009

384 pages

Date completed: January 30, 2010

This biography fueled my insatiable desire to know more about Louisa May Alcott, but it did not quite live up to the expectations I had prior to reading it. While Reisen's biography is thorough and concise, it did not bring the characters to life in the way that I had hoped it would. Instead, almost all of the people (with the exception of Louisa and perhaps Bronson) were flat and two-dimensional. Reisen merely spurts plot points over and over without any type of deeper analysis. To make matters worse, at some points there are egregious factual errors! Reisen writes that Daisy and Demi are Jo's children in Little Men, when in reality, they are Meg's. The fact that such a simple plot error could survive not only Reisen's drafts but also the editing process makes me lose a lot of respect for Reisen's rendition of Alcott's life.

I discussed this with my professor, and he assured me that due to all of the media hype, this biography was written with the intention of merely discussing Alcott's life without going further. This explains the two-dimensional caricatures of Alcott's family and friends. He pointed me to a few better biographies of Alcott, which I will hopefully add to my collection after I'm done reading everything else.

So although this biography was thorough and interesting, it didn't quite take me as far or as deeply as I would have liked. However, it definitely made me want to learn more about Alcott, so in that respect, Reisen's biography was wonderful.