Customer Reviews

Alternative Alcott by Louisa May Alcott (American Women Writers)

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Alternative Alcott is an interesting collection of Louisa May Alcott's less well-known works. Elaine Showalter has arranged and selected the pieces, and while I am always glad to read more by good authors, I thought it was weird how she sometimes cut parts out of novellas, or only presented excerpts of certain works. Of course, it already is a long and oddly heavy book as it is, but one does wonder about the reason for such exclusions. At any rate, this is overall an excellent find for either fans of Alcott, or those not quite pleased with the sentimental nature of Little Women. This book contains some less child-friendly works, and at least one, Behind a Mask, that is composed almost entirely out of savage sarcasm.

Generally, I found reading Alternative Alcott to be rather like riffling through the author's desk and reading unpublished or incomplete works in no particular order. I did find the introductory information on Alcott's life to be interesting, if a bit heavy on speculation about her personal life or possible romantic interests. Though considering how much self-insertion there is in her stories, one does wonder how much Alcott was like her characters, or what was going on behind the scenes. Showalter seems to have some kind of lesbian agenda or angle on the author, but all I could gather for sure from reading the stories is that if Alcott never worked as an actress for a year or so under an alias, she sure wished she had. And really, what more do we need to know about her than that factoid?

Basically, this is one of those very sturdy softcover books one expects to encounter in a library or university class, for which it would be a very good addition. But really, why stop there? It's got potential as a gift item for fans of Little Women or any other classic author. Or you could read it yourself, or something crazy like that. Just pick and choose the good ones, that is the joy of short story collections.