Recently I have read two new releases: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. What, if anything, do they have in common? At first glance, I would answer– the emphasis on mores and customs attached to a by-gone era.
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand written by Helen Simonson, a native Londoner residing in the D.C. area for the last two decades, focuses on propriety and manners. In fact, it could easily fit into the category of “a novel of manners” which I have not read in many, many years, probably since I had to read one in graduate school. Though not really what I usually read, this look at traditional formal English life gave me quite a chuckle. In fact, it’s nice sometimes to read something light and easy since what I usually read requires intense concentration and critical thinking skills. This novel could also be looked at as satire. While the protagonist, Major Pettigrew, a widower and senior citizen residing in his quaint cottage in a small English village, approaches life with all seriousness and traditional outlooks, his son, a young upwardly moving thirty something, represents modern twenty-first century thinking and orchestrating his life around “how to get ahead fast”, no matter who is in his way. In short, Roger, the son, an intensely driven, shallow womanizer, represents all that is wrong with the new breed of native Englishmen. When a love interest enters the Major’s life, however, change and new outlooks begin to make their way into his life. Though the ending chapters seem a little too much of a believable jump for the reader, this novel still merits reading for its look at the prim and proper English!
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott penned by Kelly O’Conner McNees offers a beautiful novel which focuses on a particular period of time in the life of Louisa May Alcott, the most prolific writer of the time. Most people think of Little Women when this classical author’s name is mentioned, but few are aware of the personal challenges that she and her family faced in getting food on their table and keeping a roof over their heads. In fact, Louisa became the primary breadwinner due to her father’s inability to deal with the real world in the midst of his devotion to Transcendentalism. Being close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who even rented a house to the family one summer (actually THE summer when this novel was set), Louisa’s peculiar and eccentric father refused to get much work in order for him “to think”!
As the novel progresses, the reader meets Joseph Singer, who is intelligent and spirited and who is obviously falling in love with Louisa, the devotedly independent novelist. Conflict arises! In that period of time, a woman could not be a writer and be married, for they did not mix. Though visibly torn between the two worlds, the reader knows from history which one Louisa chose. In the midst of the love twist, Joseph and Louisa share a devoted interest in Walt Whitman’s newly released Leaves of Grass, and Louisa sneaks her father’s copy, which Emerson personally delivered, into her bedroom at night to read secretly by candlelight.
As a historical novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott gives a reader a sense of the life and times in New England in the mid nineteenth century, as well as an accurate look into the complex life of the popular author of one of the most cherished series of all times. As a historical novel, and as a new work of literary fiction, this cleverly written book is a simple delight. -Nan
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