Hi everyone, this week I’m giving you a review of an adult read I found myself enjoying more than I should. If you grew up with Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women, then you can imagine my surprise when I saw this from a shelf at the library. I hope you enjoy the review I have for you below…
Title: The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott: A Novel
Author: Kelly O’Connor McNees
Genre: Fiction – Historical
Publication details: Berkeley Books; NY, 2010
ISBN: 9780425240830 (Paperback)
What this book is about: Returning to the summer of 1855, vivacious Louisa is twenty-two and bursting with a desire to free herself from her family and the societal constraints to do what she loves most. Stuck in small-town New Hampshire, she meets local boy Joseph Singer. As she opens her heart, Louisa finds herself torn between a love that takes her by surprise and her dream of independence as a writer in Boston. The choice she needs to make comes with a steep price, one that she will pay for the rest of her life. For readers who have loved and grown up with Little Women, this richly imagined story shows how love changed her in ways she never expected.
My review: What a gorgeous book!! I loved being transported into the mid-1850’s when not just Alcott was living but also Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman!! Oh… the essence of those writers and thinkers oozed from the pages!! I’d known a little about Louisa’s actual life story but even in this fictionalised one, the behaviour of her father Bronson, the devotion of her mother and the bonds of sisterhood brings Louisa to life for me!! I guess we’ll never know if she indeed ‘had’ a love affair but the story implied here is exquisite in its details. I really loved the language and setting and found myself falling in love with the Alcott girls again and the beauty of the New Hampshire landscape. I didn’t realise that Louisa had suffered so greatly during the Civil War and her illness would have poisoned her. What an amazing, innovative and fearless woman she was!! An amazing historical read!!
My rating: 5 ⭐
Miss Mahee's Library of Reads 