Fan fiction for Valentine’s Day

Jo and Laurie forever! As fan fiction writers would have it. This is a scene from the 1994 movie adaptation of Little Women starring Winona Ryder as Jo and Christian Bale as Laurie. Photo: Columbia Pictures

If you’re a fan of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, that classic coming-of-age tale of four sisters living in genteel poverty in 19th-century America, and if the harum-scarum Jo is your favourite of the March siblings, you may still be sulking over the fact that she and Laurie don’t marry. I know I am.

That the idiot lad went and fell in love with everyone’s least favourite sister, Amy, just adds insult to injury, and, as a result, I avoid the second volume of Little Women (published in Britain as Good Wives) like the plague.