I’ve Lost Little Women
I think almost every girl who reads Little Women by Louisa May Alcott identifies with Jo. She certainly helped me develop my confidence as a young tomboy whose only lovely feature was her hair.
Little Women was the first book I ever bought with my own money. This book was mine, and the first addition to what was surely to be the magnificent library in my future.
I recently read a review of this book at Page Turners, and it brought all these memories back to me.
I remembered that for years, I would come back to this book. During middle school, high school, college and beyond, I would reread Little Women for the pure enjoyment of it.
Then one year, and I don’t remember how long ago it was, I couldn’t make it through. I got annoyed with it. Did it somehow lose its resonance with me? Was I so changed that I no longer wanted to read what is arguably the most influential book of my life?
I still don’t have that answer. It surely can’t be that I’m too old for it or that its simplistic world view no longer applies to my life can it?
I’ve gotten rid of a lot of my book collection. That dream of having a Henry-Higgins-like library has been replaced by others, but I still have my original Little Women. Surely it will come back to me.

