The idea they love each other deep down and would have each other’s backs in a pinch is hard for me to believe. I don’t know if this was supposed to come across as good-natured ribbing and normal sibling rivalry, but I personally thought Jo has very real disdain for Amy and complete contempt for Meg.
I also struggled with the characterization and the relationships between Jo and her sisters. Superfans might love this I’m not sure I did. Later in the book, the author seems to overcompensate for this by having some characters, one of whom never previously showed any knowledge of or interest in Alcott at all, engaged in lengthy debates about her life and various interpretations of her work. One can understand her sentiments, since she finds it embarrassing to act in the Little Women scenes her family puts on and is sick of being compared to Book Jo instead of being seen as a person in her own right, but I do wonder if readers who like Little Women and picked up Belittled Women because they like it will be on board with this.
For the first third of the story, however, it’s all Little Women hatred from protagonist Jo. My first big question is whether the book will be a hit with Little Women fans, a group one assumes would be a major audience for the book. All Jo wants is for someone to see the person behind the prickliness and pinafores.īut when she gets a little too real about her frustration with the family biz, Jo will have to make peace with kitsch and kin before their livelihood suffers a fate worse than Beth.īelittled Women has so much going on, and so little of it worked for me, that I worry my review will be as noncohesive as the book. It doesn’t hurt that the reporter’s teenage son is also eager to get up close and personal with Jo–to the annoyance of her best friend, aka the boy next door (who is definitely not called Laurie). So when a famed photojournalist arrives to document the show, Jo seizes on the glimpse of another life: artsy, worldly, and fast-paced. Now Jo, along with her siblings, Meg and Bethamy (yes, that’s two March sisters in one), spends all summer acting out sentimental moments at Little Women Live!, where she can feel her soul slowly dying. As if being named after the sappiest family in literature wasn’t sufficiently humiliating, Jo’s mom, ahem Marmee, leveled up her Alcott obsession by turning their rambling old house into a sad-sack tourist attraction. Jo Porter has had enough Little Women to last a lifetime. Sharp and subversive, this delightfully messy YA rom-com offers a sly wink to the classic Little Women, as teenage Jo Porter rebels against living in the shadow of her literary namesake. Publication Date: November 29, 200 Official Summary
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