The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees

Review by Rhianon Huot

Amy Einhorn Books
Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010

Kelly O’Connor McNee’s The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott poses the question, “She taught us how to love … But who taught her?” This novel, based on Little Women, Louisa’s journals, letters, and biographies of Louisa’s life, is an imagining of an unfulfilled romance. The author chose a summer of Louisa’s life which has few historical facts attached to it.

The year is 1855 in Walpole, New Hampshire. Louisa meets a Joseph Singer, who she falls for deeply, but doesn’t wish to surrender her life and self for.

The dialogue is moved forward skillfully with lines from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the first edition of which came out the very year of the Alcotts’ vacation to Walpole. Whitman’s poetry brings your mind into a magical and romantic state as it moves the protagonist further into love’s arms. It’s quite likely Louisa herself was familiar with Whitman, as her father was good friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a staunch supporter of his.

The Lost Summer draws on many of Little Women’s themes to assemble sketches of Louisa and her family’s life, so it may appeal to lovers of Little Women. In Little Women, Jo did not truly love her beau, Laurie, in The Lost Summer, Louisa loves Joseph deeply but chooses not to be with him.

McNees tries to show us Louisa’s mind, and we’re given many reasons as to why the affair cannot be fully realized. However, it remains difficult to understand the reasoning behind Louisa’s choice of solitude. She is constantly referring to housework, specifically the laundry, that would have to be done in a domestic partnership.

Her views on marriage seem black and white, and not quite feminist in particular. For where has her sense of choice disappeared to? Can she not live in a happy marriage of compromise, as the character of Joseph promises her?

With light having been shed on the many internal dialogues and struggles that Louisa’s character has, it’s easy to imagine these very conflicts may have plagued Alcott during her real life. In the end we see her looking back on her life, perhaps a bit regretfully, but proud of the work she has accomplished.

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