📚 🚶Introducing Little Women
Discover our December book - complete with details of our seasonal book swaps
Dear walking book clubbers,
I have loved re-reading Little Women and spending some nourishing time with the Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy.
This is the book that made me wish I had sisters, and of course inspired me to try to write (although I was always anxious at the little plays and things I put on with my cousins being much worse than Jo’s inventions). Some aspects of the book are exactly as I remember from when I first read it as a child (and my memory has certainly been aided by the recent film adaptation) and others I’d completely forgotten. The book absolutely captures the hibernating family feeling of Christmas, of sitting together in the evenings, being read to, sewing, singing… It was a different life; perhaps at this time of year, it’s a life we miss.
Please scroll down to find:
Details of our December events, including our seasonal book swaps.
Discussion points to get you thinking.
Links to read and listen on.
NOTHING yet about about 2025… but fear not, I’m on the case.
Our December Little Women events
Things to note about our December events:
Children who have read the book are welcome to attend (suggested age 9+), please just drop me an email to let me know beforehand.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents…” Well, I can’t disagree with Jo March, so please pick a book from your own shelves, wrap it up and bring it along to swap with another member in our Emily’s Walking Book Club literary Secret Santa. Feel free to inscribe the book, enclose a note, or leave it blank. I’ll bring a few extra, so everyone will leave with a book.
Finally, as ever, for the benefit of your fellow walkers, you need to have read the book before coming along to a walking book club. If you’ve not read the book, you are very welcome to join the zoom instead.
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club & Seasonal Book Swap
Friday 13th December 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15. (Meet in the Europe section of the bookshop.)
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club & Seasonal Book Swap
Sunday 15th December, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 16th December, 8-9pm, £1-15
Buy Little Women from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.
Introduction & Discussion Points
In this classic children’s novel, dearly loved by grown-ups too, we follow the lives of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, as they grow up in Massachusetts against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Beginning with an unforgettable Christmas, we join them for ice skating, piano-playing, writing, hair-cutting (!), love affairs and devastating illness. It is a delight to revisit this beloved children’s story as an adult, while also taking note of the religiosity and gender politics at play.
N.B. Many people have asked whether we are discussing the English or American edition of the book (the latter is longer). We are going for the English, Penguin / Puffin edition, but of course if you’ve read the American ed, or the English sequels, that’s also great - we always talk beyond the pages in any case.
Here are a few discussion points to get you thinking ahead of our meet ups:
Who are you in the book?
Is it impossible to read this book and not relate strongly to a particular character? For me (and for Patti Smith, see below) it’s always been Jo March, how about for you? I’ve been surprised to find myself so intrigued by Marmee, reading it as an adult, especially when she tells Jo that “I am angry nearly every day of my life’. Something that came across well in the In Our Time episode (link below) is how Alcott’s four sisters were new role models for girls. If so, what do we make of them? Has Alcott covered all the bases? Are any role models really problematic? And it’s interesting that this idea of a group of girls to whom we relate continues to be a useful model - eg. The Group, Sex and the City, Girls…
The Civil War
War, again. I hadn’t realised this was going to be such a theme in our Autumn books. The Civil War, in which the father is off fighting, is both vital to the book and incidental. It influences the set up and action of the book, yet is always kept off-stage, held at bay from the domestic adventures. How does this portrait of War relate to that in our other recent picks? Why do you think Alcott kept the War so peripheral to the novel? Would you have liked more politics in the book?
Work
Work in Little Women isn’t so much a means of earning money as a virtue in and of itself. This is drummed home rather in the chapter ‘Experiments’, where Marmee allows them a week off their chores at their request, everything goes wrong and finally the sisters welcome her advice to ‘take up your little burdens again; for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as we learn to carry them. Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone; it keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion.’ So what do we think of this - both the message and also this rather moralising tone, that crops up a few times in the book?
There is masses more to discuss, but this is at least a beginning…
Are you enjoying this weekly newsletter? Might I suggest a subscription as a thoughtful and unusual Christmas present?
Discover more about Louisa May Alcott
Definitely listen to THIS enlightening episode of BBC’s In Our Time, which is especially good on the biographical and intellectual background of Little Women.
There have been many adaptations of the book - you can find an exhaustive list HERE. Perhaps a tireless walking book clubber will endeavour to see all (or most!) of them and report back. I loved Greta Gerwig’s recent film adaptation (trailer HERE), and I remember also really enjoying the 1994 film, starring Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon and others (trailer HERE).
HERE is an interesting little piece about the life of Louisa May Alcott (pictured above) in and around Boston, and you can visit her home in Concord, Massachusetts, HERE, the birthplace of Transcendentalism.
THIS is a good piece by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker about about how Little Women continues to be so important.
Finally, HERE is Patti Smith (legend and also author of previous EWBC pick Just Kids) in the Paris Review, writing brilliantly about why Little Women is so influential for her.
What’s next?
Watch this space to discover our first books of 2025…
Happy reading,
Emily
Love the outfit tie in with the book cover!
you are too beautiful, Emily...
and i mean that in the most respectful way 🙏🏼