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	• American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry ... Susan Cheever Simon & Schuster, 2007 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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hors d'oeuvres

I liked this book, even though I hesitated between a two- and three-star rating. The three stars won out because it's a great idea for a book but misses in execution. One of the reviews refers to People magazine, which is unfair. I would describe it as something like a series of pretty good articles in Vanity Fair or The New Yorker. These are fascinating subjects - the beautiful people of their day - and the treatment here is somewhat superficial. It's a little like showing up at a party expecting real food only to discover a skimpy selection of hors d'oeuvres set out on the coffee table: it isn't that the offering isn't tasty, it's that there isn't enough and the presentation is uninspired. And in the same way I might leave the party craving a meal, I left this book desperate for something more substantial. (In my case, a rereading of Thoreau and The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall.)

This book has been touted as a "group biography" which is, I suppose, a reasonable description. What this book gets right is pulling together the players and places associated with the Transcendental Movement of the 19th century. Where the book misses is in providing some context - historical, cultural, economic, social - that would have explained how and why these people and events were set apart. There are a few hints, but I found myself often going to the internet to flesh out the details. I also ended up putting together my own timeline to keep straight the comings and going, the relative ages of the people described, and to figure out what other writers and thinkers of the period may have been doing at the time. I fear that some of the confusion may have been intentional. For instance, Louisa May Alcott may have had a schoolgirl crush on Thoreau but since she was around 9 years old when her family arrived in Concord, "Louisa in Love...Henry David Thoreau" does seem a bit like a tabloid come-on.

I found the weirdly elastic treatment of time in the book very confusing. At one point, Margaret Fuller is dead, then a discussion of her relationship with Emerson and she is alive again without a clear explanation of when in time the events occurred. Sometimes, the author's own life and experiences researching and writing the book are included. I liked hearing about the impression of seeing these homes for the first time and yet the passages are often jarring, removing me from the story with irrelevant, occasionally annoying, details. (Really, what New Englander doesn't know the tourist zoo Concord has become?) And while we're on the topic of geography, a map of the Concord site would have been extremely helpful.

And yet I liked this book. I like the idea of this book. The story is compelling, even if the telling is less so. Our book group generally liked the book, too, and it was interesting enough for everyone, no matter how familiar they were with the lives and literary contributions of the subjects. For some readers, this book will provide just enough information about the Transcendentalists. The rest will appreciate the jump-start on exploring the topic for themselves.

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Creativity abounds

Susan Cheever brings a fantastic idea for a book with an extremely inventive design to almost perfect fruition. Her fascination with the intertwined lives of Alcott, Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, and Thoreau is contagious. I appreciated that she lent her own voice and sensibility to the content-it brought to life these nineteenth century authors with ageless human dilemmas. Cheever is clear in her beginning note the structure of the book will repeat events, from different perspectives. It is this aspect I felt developed less well than I had hoped. For a relatively short book with very short chapters, I found some of the repeat visits to a topic more tedious than illuminating. The best part: I learned a lot from a very fast and enjoyable read. The worst part: I
wanted to know more. Of course, that is not altogether a bad thing.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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