Ah, you found The Little Women.
I know Katharine quite well - we started out as enemies, and she's very prickly and not everyone's cuppa. But when she's on? She's on. And yes, she can be very self-conscious in her work.
Basically, she did this one in part because she discovered, while hosting guest writers at her Yale class, that a really astonishing percentage of readers seemed to want to see or identify themselves in a given work. So she decided to play with the structure to allow for that, by kicking down the fourth wall in an update of a classic that so many girls like to identify with. I'm told she did it quite well, but it isn't my thing at all. I'm a storyteller, and I expect to be told stories. I care about structure only one tiny iota less than I care about crit.
Her next book, though, is one I'm looking forward to, because she has a personal stake in it. Her grandmother was a worker at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in NY, and left a week before the fire that killed 150-plus women workers (and changed the face of American unions).
Well, like I said, she folds the self-consciousness into the "gimmick" of the novel, so to speak, but it's still enough to keep me from just being immersed in it. It reminds me a little of the self-consciousness that John Irving can't keep out of his writing, no matter how much he tries.
Plus, like I said, I have an unnatural fondness for the original, so this was bound to suffer a little.
I'd only ever read Alcott's Little Women in the abridged version. I found an unabridged version and realized why the abridged it. I liked the version that's been shorn of all the preaching, and, yes, I even cried when Beth(?) died.
For those who've read both, do you prefer the unabridged or the abridged?
For what it's worth, the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo is the only true version.
For those who've read both, do you prefer the unabridged or the abridged?
The abridged -- because of the preaching, like you said, though Alcott does poke a little fun at herself during the preachier parts.
It reminds me a little of the self-consciousness that John Irving can't keep out of his writing, no matter how much he tries.
Yep. As I say, I'm a story writer and a story reader. Tell me a story, and don't do anything to get in its way as it unrolls.
sometimes, I like the bells and whistles...they can be distracting, however.
I have no idea what version of Little Women I read. And I'd have to read it again to find out.
Don't want to.
Beth dies.
Interesting that Alcott should be brought up now. I'm just in the midst of reading her
Rose in Bloom
, the sequel to
Eight Cousins
, which I just finished. I definitely feel I have a different perspective on them as an adult than when I was younger. Especially I'm finding with
Rose in Bloom
that the undercurrents of early feminism are standing out more. I have tended to just skim through the preachy parts. Also there are some inconsistencies between the original and the sequel, but I thought that may be due to the versions I am reading (which BTW I downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg ). They are still enjoyable, I find, but not as much as when I was a kid, and probably for different reasons.
I never read Alcott until I was an adult (nor LM Montgomery, nor any number of the authors you're supposed to discover as a child or adolescent--I skipped straight to the adult section of the library as soon as my reading comprehension was up to it, and missed a great many classics thereby). Anyway, she's one of the authors I read with two brains--as a standard reader enjoying the story and characters, and as a history buff intrigued by the primary source material. The second brain even enjoys the sermons and the early feminism and all, because it's a Window on Our Past.
Anyway,
Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom
is my favorite Alcott, followed by
An Old-Fashioned Girl,
with
Little Women
still a beloved book, but a distant third. I've never quite forgiven Alcott for sticking Jo with Prof. Bhaer, but I'd marry Mac Campbell in a second, and I'm not as bothered by Charlie's fate as many readers for some reason.