Audiobook · read by volunteers
Jo's Boys
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
Read by Megan Kunkel, Martina, Melissa, Susie G., Erin Hastings, Tracy Yonemoto, Julie VW, Stephanie Land · 22 chapters · 9 h 36
About the book
Ten years after the events of Little Men, Plumfield, the school that Jo and her husband run, has grown into a lively home for dozens of young people. Jo’s Boys follows the pupils into early adulthood. Some are bright and impatient, some quietly gifted, and each has to find a path in a world that is not as simple as it looked from a schoolroom window. There are careers to choose, loyalties to test, friendships that deepen and romances that begin. Louisa May Alcott keeps her usual warmth and sense of humour, while also being frank about the tensions that come with growing up. If you enjoyed the earlier books, you will be glad to meet the old friends again. If you are new to them, the characters are easy to come to know, and the story stands on its own. It is a warm, companionable story of growing up.
Introduction
Jo’s Boys, published in 1886, is the third book in the series that began with Little Women, and the last of Louisa May Alcott’s novels about the March family. Alcott, who lived from 1832 to 1888, drew on her own life and on her family for all three books. Their characters are fictional, but many of them are modelled on real people she knew, and the warmth of the novels owes much to that closeness.
The earlier volumes follow the March sisters in their youth and then Jo’s school at Plumfield. This one takes up the story ten years after Little Men, when Plumfield has grown. The children have grown, and the book looks at their ambitions and their disappointments: what to do with a talent, what a person owes to a family, how a young woman might pursue work of her own. Alcott writes with affection but does not avoid the awkward questions of her time.
The recording has 22 chapters, running for about nine and a half hours, from “Ten Years Later” to the closing chapters. Eight LibriVox volunteers read it, so the voices change from chapter to chapter, much like the large household it describes. It is good company for a long drive or a quiet evening, especially for anyone who read Little Women as a child and would like to learn what became of its world. It is also a book about what it costs to shape a family and a school out of kindness, and about the way each generation has to find its own answers. Listeners who know the earlier volumes will recognise the humour and the gentle moralising that Alcott never quite gave up.
Public domain
Louisa May Alcott died in 1888: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text