Louisa May Alcott

I should have perhaps posted in the last week and a half to let people know that I was a complete sickie. I originally thought it was going for some form of walking pneumonia (thanks Mom) but it ended up just your ordinary cold which I so appreciated. But really, those first few days I was pretty convinced I was going to end up at a doctor which me and my insurance-less self avoid like the plague. And then this weekend, to further my offline plans, two of my really good friends from The College Years, came down to visit. So at least I had a fair excuse as to why I haven’t been posting in the last week and a half, especially when I was suppose to be doing this reading challenge. I’ve felt uber-guilty, so you can rest assured that I thought of you guys every day.

Oh! And you will never believe this week. We have had like 60+ degree days most of the week, or  really light clouds, or (wait for it) … snow. We had snow yesterday, it covered the pink cherry blossom trees in my front yard like grease on bacon.

My two friends from college

It was pretty special.  We heart our bipolar state.  Anyway, so the point is, aside from the snow, it was the best week to go flying, there were like 3 or 4 really gorgeous days and I was all stuffed up with fluid-filled ears. Anybody who has ever flown with stuffed up ears very well knows that you shouldn’t be up there, it’s like somebody is stabbing a giant stick into your eardrum, it’s that fun.  So I was relegated to hanging out on my patio with my papasan chair writing and reading, which admittedly isn’t a bad day way to spend a day, but I haven’t flown in weeks because of this crazy weather. Ah well, Spring has officially set in, so no doubt I can look forward to sun in the near future.

Also, and perhaps far more important for the time being, is that I’m like 23 days late for my Women’s History Month Challenge. I was suppose to be reading 5 books by women authors, and I did actually, but all were by Charlaine Harris and all were within the same series. So I was suppose to read 5 other books, and I haven’t gotten to 5 yet, but I did get a few in while being a sickie, so I will do one a day until I catch up. Again, I did feel really guilty about not updating but what was a girl to do. At least this week should provide some interesting reading. So without further ado…

The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott, for those not up on their literary prowess, was the woman renown for writing Little Women. I don’t know if you read Little Women at any point, but when I was about 10 I came to Oregon for the first time since I was a baby and I was addicted to that book. I read it like 4 or 5 times in 3 weeks and tried to convince everybody I knew that we needed to sit in the garden and have tea parties and wear fancy dresses and read aloud from books and play yard games.  Kind of like when I read The Secret Garden and I went around asking people if I could have a “bit o’ earth.”

In any case, The Inheritance had been on my shelf for years, perhaps a gift from my grandma.  It’s this slim novel and actually its history is way more intriguing than the actual novel.  The Inheritance was written when Alcott was 17 years old and is thought to be her first novel. It’s also discussed in the book Little Women — Jo, one of the main characters, writes this book and sends it out, and The Inheritance is that book.  It was never published however until the 1990′s when it was rediscovered amongst her papers. The manuscript had been passed around from museum to museum and just kind of hung out waiting for the right person to find it. It seemed that over the hundred+ years it had been occasionally noticed, nobody ever felt the need to actually type it out and publish it. Very weird. But in 1997, it was noticed by the right people and published as Alcott’s “very first novel written at seventeen.”

To preface, The Inheritance is your basic Austen-type romance, a kind of young girl makes good. But we kind of have to let it go since Alcott hadn’t exactly explored the depths of her writing soul yet. It follows the story of Edith Avelon who is an Italian orphan living with a well-to-do British family.  She has been raised a companion to one of the daughters in the family and she of course is quiet, well behaved, and just wants to be loved, which is difficult when the evil cousin comes and just doesn’t like her. Enter Lord Percy- love interest and good man. He falls for Edith but unfortunately, the cousin falls for him. Edith is unsure what to do, after all, she’s just a lowly Italian orphan and Lord Percy is a Lord.  Then cue all the dramatic tension of Edith being accused of stealing from the family and the cousin mwahahahaing  and you have yourself a novel. I won’t tell you how it ends up, but you can guess.

The novel is simple and sweet and vastly different from any of Alcott’s other novels. Like I said, it resembles something closer to Austen but without the depth of character usually found in her books. Did I enjoy it? Yeah. Did I care what happened to Edith? Not so much. But Alcott was 17, and going through an idealistic phase and it was totally worth a read if you’re interested at all in how she got her start towards literary greatness.  What I liked especially about it is how different it actually is from Little Women and subsequent books. She obviously could write, but her ability to define characters and make you care for them, and to describe a story plot hadn’t yet come into focus.  It’s worth a read just to remind your inside writer that even The Greats started out kind of small.

There is also this killer made-for-tv movie based on it that makes me laugh a lot.  I’d recommend it.

So that is my first foray into the Challenge.  Louisa May Alcott, I thought, was a pretty good choice for Women’s History Month. She came from extremely humble beginnings filled with poverty and had to work her butt off before being accepted into the writing world. She also was an avid abolitionist and feminist, so she’s worth a nod or two.  I am still reading The Historian but do intend to have it finished before the last of the month so the review tomorrow won’t be on that. You’ll just have to tune in tomorrow to see what other great books I managed to squeeze in during the last couple weeks.