Anniversary …

… Alcott's Anniversary — Review: 'Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of "Little Women" and Why It Still Matters' by Anne Boyd Rioux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Anne Boyd Rioux clearly loves Little Women. Her joy in the book shines in chapter after chapter, and she has never gotten over, nor wanted to get over, the complete absorption of self she experienced when she first read the book as a girl. The trouble is she lacks the critical tools to turn that joy into an explanation for why the book succeeds—for why she disappeared into Little Women when she was young and why the text became an American classic, with Alcott ranking, Rioux argues, alongside Mark Twain as the foundation of a national literature.