Thank you @netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki. Margaret Fuller was a writer and feminist back in the 1800’s. This is a fictionalized story of part of her life. She goes from Concord MA to New York and Europe. She is a contemporary with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Horace Greeley and Henry David Thoreau, among others. She was an amazing woman, but the book did not really draw me in. #netgalley #findingmargaretfuller #allisonpataki #advancedreadercopy #bookstagram #booklover #reader #bookblog #lovetoread #fictionreader #bookreview #bookrecommendation #readersofinstagram #bookloversofinstagram #takeapagefrommybook #readallthebooks #booksbooksbooks #booksofinstagram #bookwormproblems #bookaholic #booknerd #whattoread #readingtime #bookaddict #ilovetoread #ilovebooks #needtoread #readallday

Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki tells us her story. Margaret had a short but extraordinary life with many accomplishments . Why do we not know more about her!! This is a well researched and well written book and brought Margaret Fuller to life. Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I had never heard of Margaret Fuller! Such a unique character in history! I loved her tenacity and her intellect. And all the historical characters in this book…really had me wanting to do more research. Now, this novel did slow down a bit in the middle, this is the only reason for the 4 star rating. It is very well researched and I enjoyed learning about this fascinating woman in history.

i found this book interesting, as i had never heard of margaret fuller and it brought to light her work towards equality for women in early america. there are however, so many people name dropped in this book, it makes it very hard to follow. i found this book very slow to start. it didn’t pick up for me until about 60% into the book. i will say. the last 100 pages i couldn’t put it down. thank you random house publishing-ballantine for this arc.

Interesting book about Margaret Fuller and the Trancendenalists. I never heard of her before this. Another “forgotten” woman brought to life.

I found the book to be a little slow in some places, but otherwise a good read.

Finding Margaret Fuller is a lovely historical fiction focusing in on the life of one remarkable women. As someone who’s been madly in love transcendentalists since school, I admit myself ashamed that I had never heard of Fuller or read her works. She absolutely deserves to be remembered along with Emerson and Thoreau!

This book follows a biographical storyline, focusing less on drama or stakes, to carefully lay out Fuller’s life. I enjoyed immersing myself in the details of her world and thoughts. Overall, I would absolutely recommend this book for historical fiction fans!

(TikTok review coming this week!)

I may be in the minority here, but I did not enjoy this book. It was very well researched, but I could not connect with the main character at all. Her life was boring! It was not enjoyable, shocking, perturbing, or interesting. Margaret Fuller may have been an influential and progressive woman, but there was nothing in this book that made me want to know more about her.

No, on second thought, I would have liked more about her life in Europe. That section was much too short for what was surely the most interesting part of her life. I get that she was friends with, and possibly an influence on, Emerson, Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott, but I did not need the majority of the book to be about her visiting those much more famous authors every single year.

Fascinating! As with all the best works of historical fiction, I learned an enormous amount reading this superbly researched story, while enjoying the experience immensely.

Allison Pataki has a considerable knack for identifying and shining a spotlight on utterly remarkable women about whose lives we know far too little in the modern day. Despite my having amassed quite a bit of information about most of the other members of the Concord “genius cluster,” prior to reading Pataki’s Finding Margaret Fuller, I knew precious little about Ms. Fuller and her amazing contributions and incredible intellect. Pataki illuminates not only the three primary “chapters” of Fuller’s adult life - in Massachusetts, New York and then Europe - but weaves in interesting bits and pieces regarding the lives of so many other important historical figures - among them Emerson, Thoreau Hawthorne and Louis May Alcott in Concord, Horace Greeley in New York, Chopin and George Sand, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She likewise educates us about the Roman Revolution, about which I likewise had only a passing understanding.

And Pataki accomplishes these feats in deliciously descriptive prose, and dialogue that breathes life into these characters now long deceased. Moreover, Finding Margaret Fuller is an at once intelligent and compulsive, accessible read - which unto itself is notable.

I loved it! Highly recommended!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the privilege of a complimentary ARC. Opinions are my own.

This well-researched, well-written historical novel is highly recommended for lovers of overlooked women in history. The only thing I knew about Margaret Fuller is vague—she was part of the early abolitionist and suffragist movement. What a loss, though! A woman of great character and intellectual spirit, educated by her father who knew she’d never get any kind of education in the outside world. (Harvard did not admit women until 1920 and was the first college/university to do so. A separate school for women, the Annex, became known as Radcliffe, established by a woman named Elizabeth Agassiz, in 1879. It gave out certificates to women, not degrees.)
The novel follows her as she searches for a way to support her widowed mother and younger siblings. She journeys to Concord, Massachusetts where she encounters the Transcendentalists: Emerson and Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Bronson Alcott, and a young Louisa May.
Throughout, she returns often to Concord, to Waldo and his wife, to recover and ground herself in a home away from home. The story is told in the first person with a sensitive, reflective tone. I really feel the author captured the spirit of Margaret Fuller, and her novel has made me even more curious to read further about the woman and her era.
Highly recommend historical fiction, worth repeating.

This was a very interesting book about a lady I had never hear of. She was certainly one to be admired as she went though her life always aware of how women should be treated but yet were not. I found Allison Pataki's writing to be both lyrical and poetic in nature. It is so fluid that it easily pulls the reader into time and place.

I enjoyed learning more about Margaret Fuller and her amazing work. She clearly paved the way for so much social reform in the US. However, as interesting as her work is, not much truly happens for at least 50% of this book. In the book's first half, we watch Margaret meet and form friendships with famous writer after famous writer, but nothing much happens to her. She writes, walks, she teaches, complains about money and she puzzles over her strange relationship with Emerson.

The book blurb states that she was “an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his scandalous Scarlet Letter,” but her relationship with Hawthorne takes up less than a few pages and involves two short meetings. I don’t understand how their relationship could have inspired anything. It also states that she “spars with Edgar Allan Poe,” but this is barely a blip in the novel. I would have loved to get more of these interesting moments of Margaret's life instead of the mundane moments that make up most of the novel.

The book's second half starts to get more interesting when Margaret begins working for Horace Greeley and travels to Europe. However, there isn’t much plot besides Margaret meeting more famous artists, writers, and thinkers. I enjoyed the romance between Margaret and Giovanni and Margaret’s role in Italy's revolution, but I wish that had been more of a focus than a rushed conclusion.

Overall, I enjoyed learning more about Margaret Fullers and am grateful for her contributions. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine Books for an eARC.

I really enjoyed this book! I cannot believe I have never heard of Margaret Fuller before. I have heard of all the greats - Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, etc. But how have I never heard of Margaret Fuller when she was of the same circle?

It's also crazy to me that she had nightmares about her death, which indeed came true. She was so young, and was doing so much for the women's movement. Imagine what the world would have looked like today had she lived longer.

This book was beautifully written and haunting. I felt it was a bit long at times, but overall this was a fantastic read!

What a wonderful book about a woman who lived so much history! It is a reimagining of the Life of Margaret Fuller, a historical figure I knew nothing about until I picked up this book.

She knew authors and historical figures such as Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walt Whitman, and others.

The biggest thing I didn’t realize, but probably should have, was that all of these great authors didn’t live and work in a silo; they all knew each other. They all had opinions on each other‘s work and they helped or hurt each other. The fact that Edgar Allan Poe was so hateful to her was a revelation.

I highly recommend this book for historical fiction lovers.

4.5 rounded up

Wonderful book by Allison Pataki- a new author to me. Also read the Marjorie Post novel. Pataki is quickly becoming a go to author for me.

Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki, centers on a figure of the 19th century that not many of us have even heard of. I myself had never even come across Margaret Fuller in all my reading of history. However, most will recognize some of the famous literary names that are characters Margaret meets through her journey to find herself.

The real Margaret Fuller is one of the first American women to lay the stepping stones for what would become the Womens Rights movement. She leaves a very different life than her contemporary peers, having been educated to the point that she becomes known as the “Best Read Women of New England.” Her journeys around early 19th Century New England have her cross paths with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and even a young Louisa May Alcott and a very questionable Edgar Allen Poe. She accomplishes many firsts in her life, including becoming the first women editor of a newspaper, and the first woman to be allowed access to the hallowed Harvard Library.

Yet, we find Pataki weaves a story of a women, who despite her accomplishments and many of them quite notable, still feels adrift in her life. Something is missing for her, but even though other women look down their noses as Margaret for being single and childless-in an age where that is wildly uncommon-Fuller strives to find something more to contribute to the world.

While Margaret Fuiller is a fascinating character, and one who should be more well known for ALL of her many notable feats as a woman in the 19th century, I will say this was probably my least favorite novel by this author. I did find Margaret an obnoxious character in someways, unaware of the feelings of other women around her, and I found the first 2/3 of the book kind of slow going,. However, it is still well written, and brings to life a woman who even now, would be an accomplished figure. I still recommend this novel for fans of Pataki, for those interested in Women’s history, or even fans of those authors we were all, maybe somewhat forced, required to read in English class.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the advance reader copy.

This is a novel, but based on the very real Margaret Fuller, someone I didn't know anything about at the beginning of this book but who I fell in love with by the end. Margaret is intelligent, a successful writer, and someone who is unconcerned in fitting into the traditional role of women in society in the mid-1800s. She spends a lot of time in Concord, NY at the home of Ralph Waldo Emmerson. Also there are Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott. Her ambition, drive, and determination take her back and forth from Concord to Boston to NYC and eventually to London and Italy. Despite being an unconventional woman in a man's world of writing, she is successful, taking advantage of her relationships with men who are open-minded and eager for her to succeed. One of these is Horace Greely. Despite not knowing anything about the main character, I became engrossed in this story right away. I loved following Margaret's life path and by the end, I felt that I knew her very well. The names of famous people sprinkled throughout the book that Margaret came into contact with were fun too, mostly I loved her! I highly recommend it! Thank you so, so much NetGalley for the advanced copy.

What a thoroughly fascinating read of an obscure character in American history! Why Margaret Fuller was so little known is beyond me considering her high profile friendships with fellow transcendentalists of her day...Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. She also mingled with the likes of the young Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederic Chopin, William Wordsworth and many more. Her life was wrought with sorrow and triumphs alike as she persevered through a man's world, longing to be accepted amongst these great thinkers and writers of her day. Certainly her mission was accomplished as a literary critic, author of many works, editor with the New York Tribune, and the first international war correspondent. Pataki introduces us to Fuller with realistic language and dialogue, not embellishing her feminist life with twenty-first century sentimentalities. I am intrigued to do more research, and equally anxious to pick up more of Pataki's works.
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Okay, Allison Pataki is officially on the auto-buy list. Also…is she my favorite historical fiction writer now? Maybe? It’s possible. I read The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post and was so delighted by how great it was, I had high hopes for Finding Margaret Fuller and WOW did it deliver! I’m absolutely loving these epic, sweeping, meticulously researched novels about these fascinating women who, for who in the world knows what reason, we haven’t heard of but are so important to our history. I’m obsessed. Nailed it again. Will absolutely recommend.

I am fairly sure I never heard of Margaret Fuller so this was a lovely, surprising and educational story for me. Although written as historical fiction, it is clear from the writing and from the afterward that this was a deeply researched work of love. Margaret Fuller was educated by her brilliant father to the point that in the early 19th century, she was an odd egg. When her father died and she needed to earn money for her mother an siblings, she began to do freelance writing and caught the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson who became her fast friend, perhaps with some romantic attachment that was not consummated since he was married. Thus, in her young adulthood, we meet Thoreau, the Alcott family and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Fuller became known to many as an advocate for women and remained unmarried for most of her life. We know early on that she, her husband and her young son died in a shipwreck and then, Partaki takes us through her story. How she became famous through her writing and ideas, was a successful author, became the first woman editor under Horace Greeley and went off to Europe to be his overseas correspondent in an early bid for Italy to be united. How she did so much on a shoestring, helping her family scrape along. How she met famous people: Wordsworth, Chopin, George Sands, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And that she essentially disappeared. I am no historian, but I am very fond of Louisa May Alcott and studied a bit about the transcendentalists through the years. I slogged through Walden, read some of Emerson's essays and read various pieces about Bronson Alcott. I read The Scarlet Letter and House of the Seven Gables. Yet Finding Margaret Fuller also helped me find these progressive thinkers and sometimes ne'er do wells all over and to think of them in a whole different and very enjoyable way. Great story. Well written. And added a little more European history to my very poor world history education. Definitely recommend!

This book was great, it felt fresh and not like anything else I've read lately. It kept me intrigued all the way through, I didn't want to put it down.