Louisa May Alcott » Reviews

Alcott: ‘Not The Little Woman You Thought She Was’

LMA Staff — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:10 +0000

Though many readers associate Alcott with the sweetness of Little Women, Reisen tells NPR‘s Linda Wertheimer, Alcott’s legacy — and Jo March’s, too — is really about the empowerment of women and girls around the world.

“You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March,” says one Alcott fan.

In the time since Little Women was published in 1868, Reisen says she believes a countless number of women have — as Alcott put it — “resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.”

Listen here to the NPR interview

School Library Journal: “Visually Rich,” “Inspirational”

LMA Staff — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:19:18 +0000

[STARRED REVIEW] Harriet Reisen’s fine script and Nancy Porter’s vivid production combine to treat viewers to a visually rich, well-paced, and intimate view of Louisa May Alcott’s life. The story unfolds in well-paced dramatized vignettes, excellent scholarly commentary, clips from the original film of Little Women, and readings from Alcott’s personal letters and from her biographer, Ednah Cheney, played with a marvelous, spine-cracking correctness by Jane Alexander.

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“The Story-Telling is Superb”

LMA Staff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:19:52 +0000

Alcott is known as the iconic March sister, Jo. In Reisen’s book, the reader meets the real Louisa; the pulp fiction writer, the comedian, the moody and the cantankerous.

This book will appeal to all who love Alcott classics, who cherish stories of fierce, independent women, and who want to know about writer’s craft and inspiration. The book’s research is impeccable, and the author’s storytelling is superb. Meet the real Louisa May Alcott. – Lynn Brogan, Suite101

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“Smart”… “tasteful,” says The Boston Globe

LMA Staff — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:29:31 +0000

“Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’ ’’ manages to penetrate the facts of Louisa May Alcott’s life (1832-1888) to get at her humor, her spirit, and her growth as a person. With a smart, tasteful use of docudramatic re-creations, director Nancy Porter gives us the story of a writer’s interior world and genesis with more drama and color than you generally expect from a 90-minute documentary.
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The Buffalo News rates Alcott film 4 out of 4 stars

LMA Staff — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:55:00 +0000

The documentary is an education about the period in American history and the Alcotts’ friendships with the leading reformers of their day. It is also an intimate look at the hardships of Alcott’s life — the poverty of her early life, the death of sister Elizabeth at 23, and the health problems that began to plague her in her late 30s.
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Booklist calls Alcott film “clever… stunning… entertaining & instructive”

LMA Staff — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:56:53 +0000

Booklist 11/15/09

Booklist’s starred review says “magnificent” biography brings Louisa “to whirling life.”

LMA Staff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:28:40 +0000

Reisen’s love for Little Women and curiosity about the author became a grand obsession, inspiring her to write the screenplay for the first Alcott documentary and this uniquely vital and dramatic biography. Reisen’s cinematic eye brings Louisa to whirling life as a coltish, fearless girl of “explosive exuberance” and sharp intellect, while she portrays Louisa’s parents with compassion and criticism: blue-blooded Abigail, continually pregnant, impossibly burdened, yet resilient and innovative; utopian Bronson, famous for his progressive ideas, infamous for his incompetence. Alcott inherited her mother’s pragmatism and courage and a touch of her father’s vision and madness and bravely struggled through a crazy-quilt childhood of wretched poverty and social privilege—their closest friends were the luminaries Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, whom Alcott loved. She supported the family, laboring as a laundress, teaching, and serving as an army nurse in the Civil War while “training herself as a businesswoman as well as a fast, versatile pen for hire.” Reisen analyzes Louisa’s great pleasure in writing lucrative pulp fiction, her sacrifices, adventures, and brilliant career. Here, finally, is Alcott whole, a trailblazing woman grasping freedom in a time of sexual inequality and war, a survivor of cruel tragedies, a quintessential American writer. Reisen’s magnificent biography will be in high demand when PBS premieres her American Masters documentary. — Donna Seaman

NPR interview with Nancy Porter

LMA Staff — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:44:11 +0000

WNRI/NPR’s Bob Seay interviews director/producer Nancy Porter on her latest film, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women at the Rhode Island Film Festival.
Listen to the NPR interview

People Magazine asks, “Who Knew?”

LMA Staff — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:31:59 +0000

“The Little Women author smoked hash, had a crush on Thoreau and may have been manic depressive,” says People’s November 23, 2009 issue.

“Who knew?”

Washington Paper Lauds Biography

LMA Staff — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:49:41 +0000

“Ms. Reisen is a master storyteller, enthused Marion Elizabeth Rodgers of The Washington Times about the author of Louisa May Alcott. “With compassion and insight, she propels readers on to the next adventure, sacrifice, tragedy and triumph… .that happy sense of discovery is your reward in reading this masterful work by this talented new biographer.”