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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart
I believe Geraldine Brooks' new 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. [6 Mar. 2005, C1]
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Heller McAlpin
Geraldine Brooks' novel is a moving and inspirational tour de force. [6 Mar 2005, p.R4]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Brooks's affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Karen Joy Fowler
March is an altogether successful book, casting a spell that lasts much longer than the reading of it.
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Favorable
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Sydney Morning Herald Michelle Griffin
It is all the more remarkable that Geraldine Brooks could come to this well-worn, well-loved material and find a new story to tell, one that will make readers return to Little Women with a different understanding.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen
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.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
The novel, expertly capturing the speech and attitudes of the time, forms an ingenious counterpoint to Alcott’s.
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Favorable
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USA Today Anita Sama
Imaginative extrapolations, done successfully as in March, illuminate the original works and allow tangential characters to claim their own full lives.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal John Freeman
It feels honorable, elegant and true -- an adult coda to the plangent idealism of "Little Women."
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Favorable
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The Economist
Louisa May Alcott would be well pleased.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles
The great philosophical and military clashes of 19th-century America come excitingly alive in this carefully researched novel.
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Favorable
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Atlantic Monthly Christina Schwarz
Brooks's narrative is remarkably tight. Whereas much literary fiction wallows in digression, here every scrap of information propels the story forward.
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Mixed
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Booklist Marta Segal Block
The nineteenth-century writing style is accurate and entertaining, but it may be too ornate for some readers. [1 Feb. 2005, p. 938]
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Mixed
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Kirkus Reviews
The battle scenes are riveting, the human drama flat.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Book Review Thomas Mallon
Brooks is capable of strong writing about the natural world and nicely researched effects about the human one... but the book she has produced makes a distressing contribution to recent trends in historical fiction, which, after a decade or so of increased literary and intellectual weight, seems to be returning to its old sentimental contrivances and costumes.
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