Review of Little Men by Louisa May Alcott

Out of the 3 books in the series, I enjoyed the first the most.

Little Women was a heartwarming read. Little Men follows the perspective of the boys under Jo’s care. The reader is meant to follow their development as human beings, as they learn lessons and make decisions. They have their own wide world to explore, fighting wars with their lead soldiers and concocting games, all the while learning about nature and life.

By way of injecting a little conflict into the fluffy narrative, Alcott introduces Dan, a troublemaker, who of course undergoes many changes by the end.

Alcott’s strength is in portraying characters realistically. The lives of her creations are convincing. It is easy to get engrossed in her books in my opinion because of the way her characters interact. Sure, they are all upstanding citizens with stiff morals, but they still make mistakes, hesitate and act genuinely human. For the time, this was not risky stuff and it is even less shocking now, but Alcott was interested in exploring human nature, childhood, adulthood, and those many moments and transitions in between that move and enlighten us – the discovery of love, of jealousy, the perils of lying, bullying, and pride.

It is all realistic in the sense that she did not resort to contrived plot devices or the unsurprising tropes of genre fiction. She avoided many of the pitfalls of popular authors (described in Little Women) whose fictive preoccupations add to the surplus of morbidity present in our culture.

This is just good, wholesome storytelling. She carried on the tradition of Dickens, with an appeal to a younger audience.