Reviews for March

“Good books can be slotted, characterized, explained; great books often cannot. I believe Geraldine Brooks’s novel March is a very great book. I believe it breathes new life into the historical fiction genre, the borrowing-a-character-from-the-deep-past phenomenon, the old I-shall-tell-you-a-story-through-letters tradition. I believe it honors the best of the imagination. I give it a hero's welcome.”

—Beth Kephart, Chicago Tribune

“March is a beautifully wrought story about how war dashes ideals, unhinges moral certainties, and drives a wedge of bitter experience and unspeakable memories between husband and wife.”

—Heller McAlpin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Clarity of vision, fine, meticulous prose, the unexpected historical detail, a life-sized protagonist caught inside an unimaginably huge event. [March] shows the same seamless marriage of research and imagination. . . . Brooks’s version of March’s story is both harrowing and moving. . . . March is an altogether successful book, casting a spell that lasts much longer than the reading of it.”

—Karen Joy Fowler, The Washington Post Book World

“It's a sterling example of a brazen genre-the novel that burrows inside another novel, borrowing some of its characters and situations but, in this uncommon case, returning to the host book a liveliness that age and fashion had sapped. . . . Would that they were all as sensitively and purposefully done as this one.”

—David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle

“Brilliant. . . . It is this disconnection between the inner self (what one knows and feels) and outward presentation (what one allows others to see and know of oneself) that provides this wonderful novel with dazzling narrative tension. . . . It is this struggle for balance-between being human and being principled-that is Brooks’s brilliant creative stroke. From the intimidating virtues of the March sisters, it's clear that Alcott favored principles. But thank goodness for Geraldine Brooks: She allows her characters to be human. And in the end, they have more to teach us.”

—Greg Changnon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Brooks has written a gripping story of an impossible time, and simultaneously a neat deconstruction and reconstruction of one of American literature’s best-known families.”
—Portland Oregonian

“Richly imagined…This meticulously researched and well-crafted book reveals that atrocities occur on both sides in war, leaving countless innocent victims, and that even the most seemingly dedicated often have feet of clay.”
-- Rocky Mountain News

“When I learned the subject of this novel, I felt a twinge of envy. How inspired to fill out Mr. March, absent from nearly all of Little Women but, as a chaplain in the Civil War, probably up to something quite as interesting as the tribulations of his four daughters at home….[I]n March, Brooks dares to create a man of his times, who believes that curbing his wife is among his proper duties as a husband. She also allows him to be as self-righteous as might be expected of someone with his fervent, high-minded convictions.”

—Christina Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly

“It’s lively history, the sort that jumps off the page and won’t let you go. Brooks’ talent lies in her ability to bring life and personality to history.”

—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“Inspired….A disturbing, supple, and deeply satisfying story, put together with craft and care an imagery worthy of a poet….I picked up March because I liked the idea of the book.  I closed the cover loving its execution.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Brooks has achieved something extraordinary in her new novel.  It is powerful yet entertaining, and thought-provoking as it breathes life into something familiar.  And for all the hardship and suffering it contains, March is most abidingly a story of redemption, one of heartfelt depth and humanity.”

—Charlotte Observer

“[T]he vivid description of battles and atrocities is equal to any found in The Red Badge of Courage and Andersonville….This is a gripping historical novel, brave enough to reveal the gray areas of politics and war.  Although set in the 19th century, there’s a timeless relevance to the novel.  That, coupled with Brooks’ powerful command of language and her ability to create engaging minor characters, firmly establishes her as a writer to watch.”

—Rocky Mountain News

“March is a hugely successful novel, both for the history it re-frames and the all-too-human lives it captures.  Brooks’ adept language and her enviable ability to give adequate historical reference without weighing down the narrative place her now novel alongside her first – which is quite a feat.”

—New Orleans Times-Picayune

“Engrossing and entertaining.”

—The Olympian

“[March] is a wholly original and engrossing story about a man whose lofty principles are scorched by his failings during the Civil War.”

—Christian Science Monitor

“Stunning….Fascinating and meticulously researched…Masterfully depicted.”

—BookPage

* “Luminous….Brooks’ 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.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred)