77. Jo and Laurie

Jo & Laurie. Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz. 2020. [June] 384 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: "Little Women? That's the title?" The author looked concerned. Above her light brown eyes and beneath her threadbare linen cap, the chestnut curls that framed her face were shaking. Miss Josephine March was all of seventeen years old, and though her girlish curves were slight, her spirit was immense. There was nothing little about her, or her characters. Or so she had thought.

Premise/plot: Jo March has quite a task ahead of her! Her publisher is demanding that she write a sequel to her hit smash LITTLE WOMEN. The problem? Jo doesn't know HOW to end their stories. The idea of marrying off her sisters one by one and giving them happily ever afters feels weird--awkward. 

Amy and Meg still don't know quite what to make of their fictional selves. Meg is especially embarrassed that she's been paired off with Mr. John Brooke!!! They've hardly had any conversations together--never once shared any intimacy hinting at possible romance. And, Amy, well she doesn't like the way she comes across in the book. The two have ideas--a few--about what their fictional counterparts MIGHT want for the future. But it's so silly and ridiculous. For example, Amy tells Jo wouldn't it be a lark if she were to marry Laurie in the sequel!!! The only living Beth is the fictional one. Jo misses the real Beth so much, it almost feels too painful to write a different future for Beth.

 Laurie does his best to distract his close friend as she struggles with draft after draft after draft. He even takes her and Meg on a holiday to NEW YORK CITY. He's gone all out--even getting tickets to see Charles Dickens perform! But he's got something bigger planned for their trip...

My thoughts: Jo and Laurie (the book) reminded me of Anne of the Island with just a teeny tiny sprinkling of Dawson's Creek. In other words, it felt like COMING HOME.

I'm sure you've got questions. This book does not alter Louisa May Alcott's Little Women--not really. The final manuscript version that Jo March (the book character from Jo and Laurie) turns into her publisher is the one and only Little Women. (Yes, it was published in two parts. Little Women. Good Wives.) Their fictional counterparts remain absolutely the same--Jo marries her professor; Beth dies; Meg marries John and has twins; Amy marries Laurie.

The novel plays around with the concept that Josephine March is the author of LITTLE WOMEN and it is an semi-autobiographical novel. In this alternate reality, she didn't change names. Meg is Meg. Beth is Beth. Amy is Amy. Laurie is Laurie. She added characters--like Aunt March--imagined scenes and situations. She also changed reality to suit: like Beth recovering from scarlet fever. Their fictional counterparts only partially resemble the real ones.

JO feels certain (well, mainly) that the FICTIONAL Jo would never marry Laurie. But would the real-life Jo ever do so???

Because the book doesn't really alter the REAL Little Women, I don't feel like I'm betraying Louisa May Alcott's characters by thoroughly enjoying this one. I don't have to choose between Jo and her professor and Jo and Laurie. (I've always been team professor, by the way. Just like I was Team Pacey and NOT in any way Team Dawson for Dawson's Creek.)

Quotes:

"It's not charming. I'm not charming." After making a living writing her customary blood-and-thunder tales--or so she thought of them--this business of feminine tradition and treacle was all very unfamiliar. To be fair, with the exception of her sisters, Jo knew and liked hardly any girls at all.

"Good Wives. That's what the title is meant to be, of the second part. Roberts Brothers wants us all married off, Niles says. What madness! If I can't imagine it, I can't very well write it, and I can't sell a book I can't write."

This was why she wrote the first book, wasn't it? To be free? Freedom, after all, was the whole point, was it not? Byronic or otherwise. Freedom to create, to do as she pleased. Freedom from poverty and servitude. Freedom from war debts, from worry about who would pay the coal man and the butcher. Freedom from having to be the kind of girl who grew up to only write grocery lists. Freedom to go and write whatever she liked...

Jo wrote not just because she wanted to, which she did, and not just because she needed to earn a wage, which she did, but because she must.

"Since you have been so bold as to have married me off to a man who doesn't even know my name, you need a suitor as well."
"She has a point," Amy said. "Turnabout is fair play and all that."
Meg considered their middle sister. "Perhaps a professor."
"To ensure that I die of boredom?" Jo rolled her eyes.
"Fine. Professor Bore."
Amy folded up her sketch-pad. "Bore isn't a name. Bayer? Baer?"
"Bhaer. There you go. He's from Europe. Positively continental. You'll love him," said Meg, pointing to a head of German lettuce.

Amy stuck out her chin. "I want Laurie."
"You can't have Laurie," Meg said. "It doesn't work in the narrative. You and Laurie don't even like each other all that much. Actually, I take it back about the German professor. Obviously, Jo has to marry herself off to Laurie."
"Obviously?!" Jo sat up, spluttering indignantly. "I do not!"

Deciding to slander the character of your family in the pages of your as-yet-unwritten novel was one thing. Actually doing it, as it turned out, was quite another.

Laurie could not say when it had happened or why. There were no moments to pinpoint, no lines to quote. The truth of the thing had inched up around him a season at a time, finally bursting into blossom with the apple orchards adjoining their two houses. Laurie had grown up learning how to love her. It was the only lesson he was ever any good at, because Jo herself had taught him, even if she hadn't known she was doing it.

"Don't die, Amy," Jo begged, openly sobbing now. "Please don't die. I'll be so much better to you. I'll even let you choose your own fate in my book, if you like. Whatever you want. You can have Laurie, even, if you really want him."

© 2021 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews