I recently finished reading March by Geraldine Brooks and while it’s obvious that she is a talented writer, I don’t know that it deserved a Pulitzer.
I appreciate that Brooks was trying to tell an important story about the violent brutality of slavery and the invisible scars of war. However, we only see slavery through March’s perspective and by making slavery secondary to March’s personal development, I think it came off a bit as a White Savior/Magical Negro (without the magic) story. I really liked the first few chapters, she did a great job of making you really feel the violence and guilt and sacrifice of a battle and it’s aftermath. I wish she had stayed in that vein and focused on telling the story of a Union solider fighting and sacrificing for a cause he believed in. Of course you can’t write a Civil War story without talking about slavery. I know the first part of the book is his POV so we have to see it through his eyes but I think it would have been better if his reaction was more, “Dang, I knew it was bad but this is *really* bad” instead of “My wife and I are such good people for making the sacrifices we made to help these poor, good people”
Maybe I’m being unfair to March because I’m currently reading Gilead and Kindred (I swear I’m not obsessed with Antebellum/Civil War historical fiction. My TBR is a combination of alphabetization and library holds and this is a coincidence). Gilead (Marilynne Robinson) won the Pulitzer the year before March. It also deals a lot with the emotional and mental impact of the Civil War on the survivors. Kindred (Octavia Butler) is a book by a Black Author about a Black character experiencing the inhumanity of slavery. March tries to cover both and I don’t think it really works.
by Anxious-Fun8829