|
|
Review by Barbara Franklin
I have been a fan of Louisa May Alcott since reading Little Women the summer before fifth grade. I quickly read everything else by Alcott and have since reread them several times.
Now as an adult, I find reading her recently published first novel The Inheritance very exciting. The basic Alcott style is evident. The story is a romance with the "good but poor girl," the "evil-hearted" woman, and the "true hero." The characters are presented, the plot set in motion, the grand setting described, and then the reader is swept away.
The heroine Edith Adelon, a beautiful, penniless Italian orphan, is a companion to Amy Hamilton, a wealthy English girl. Young, wealthy, and handsome Lord Percy arrives to visit his friend Arthur Hamilton, Amy's brother, and falls in love with Edith. Lady Ida, cousin to the Hamiltons, determines to marry Lord Percy. To do this, she must discredit Edith and thus vanquish her rival. The truth of Edith's parentage is discovered and, as in all of Alcott's novels, goodness triumphs over deceit. Sounds like a bit of soap opera, doesn't it? Yet, Alcott's sincerity and strong characters shine through the suds.
Aside from the merit of the book is the intriguing question of how an Alcott manuscript has survived unpublished for almost 150 years. It was found by researchers in 1988 among the Alcott papers in the Harvard Library with the handwritten notation "My first novel written at seventeen." Alcott, born in 1832, apparently never submitted it for publication, although it contains several plot lines that appear in later books. The interesting thing is that her style, characterization, and emphasis on the virtues of honesty and self-sacrifice are so evident in this "first novel."
At 17, Alcott may have been dreaming of a life without the hardship she could surely foresee. With her father's failed utopian schemes and a younger sister who died leaving a child to raise, Alcott supported the family by writing scores of stories and fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming famous. She left quite an Inheritance. Who knows? Perhaps there is more.
Barbara Franklin is a children's librarian in Nashville, Tennessee.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
Support your