Little, Big by John Crowley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Little, Big
Book Review: Always a Surprise
Summary: 5 Stars
I received this book as a Christmas gift when I was in high school in the 1980's, and over the years I've read it multiple times and end up in awe each time. I majored in English in college, and Crowley's mastery of the language is stunning. What a pleasure to read writing of such quality!
One of my favorite things about reading this book is that it's a surprise every time...the stories are so dense and convoluted that I can never remember how the book ends, so it's almost like reading it for the first time every time. Splendid!
Book Review: At Last: A TRUE Masterpiece of Late 20th century Fiction
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read 'Little,Big' in the late 1980s because I noticed the following fascinating pattern: amongst the most rigorous reviewers in places such as The Washington Post, NY Times, NY Review of Books, etc., every single review of certain books concluded with remarkably similar words, very much along the lines of: "[Such-&-such] is a fine book, but it just isn't 'Little,Big'." And one could almost hear the critic sighing palpably. And this happened again & again.When combined with each critic also reminding us each time that 'Little,Big' has won ALL the significant awards - well, how could I not hie forth & read on?
READER BEWARE: 'Little,Big" is indeed a masterpiece, but many find they must give it at least 100 pages or so before they are firmly netted within the author's grasp & vision. Do yourself the favor therefore of giving it that 100-150 pp. of suspended judgement. It is more than worth the wait. By & by you will be thoroughly wrapped up in a world of masterful literary allusion & allegory. Crowley not only shape shifts through time & space: his Voice changes so deftly & attentively that - for instance - even mere handfuls of paragraphs refering to Mrs. Drinkwater's first vision of fairies is redolent with the inexplicable "sound" of Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'; the adventures of Sylvie & Bruno are similarly full of Carrollian allusion & texture; the observations of one non-specific (fairy or not?) key being, 'Mrs. Underwood", are worthy of a scout working overtime for Bollingen & Joseph Campbell.
More awe-inspiring yet, Crowley pulls you through mind-bogglingly deft changes in past/present, reality/"un"reality, et cetera; & so rapidly that your breath is, yes, truly taken gasping from your body. How often are masterpieces page-turners? How often are page-turners masterpieces? 'Little,Big: Or, The Fairies' Parliament" is just that. I can think of no other book deserving of this accolade in late 20th century fiction. "Let him follow love," counsels Grandfather Trout midway through this great good book. Let you, too, find love - & astonishing writing, vision & grasp - by snatching up a copy ASAP, and hanging in there until you are happily ensnared for life. You will not only not be sorry; you will be moved beyond words. I love all of Crowley's work, but on the astonishing strength of 'Little,Big" alone, John Crowley is my hero. I can say that of no other living novelist.
Book Review: Best of the Best
Summary: 5 Stars
John Crowley is truly a genius. I don't know any other author who combines immense and epic vision, with flawless, artful, and poignant prose. He's simply amazing, and Little, Big is one of his best works. Read it, and when you fall in love, then pick up Aegypt, and begin the REALLY epic series...Book Review: Big Promise, Little Delivery
Summary: 1 Stars
It is interesting when so many readers of this book describe it as not having much of a plot. In fact, it does have a plot, it is just so poorly executed that by the end it appears to have vanished amid the author's struggles to make sense of it.
The idea behind the book is that the family's founder has some loosely identified connection with faeries, ie the "little" people, and that his descendants are enmeshed in some great Tale, ie: "big" deal, which started long before they were born but which evidently will end with them. Into this comes Smokey Barnable who marries the founder's granddaughter, Daily Alice, and spends his time trying to understand what it all means.
The first half of the book contains some interesting stuff, portraits of family members at various stages of the multi-generational saga, but by the mid-point it begins to become clear that the author has no plan for resolving any of the threads that have been outlined.
The book then goes seriously awry when Alice's sister Sophie gives birth to her only child, Lilac, which is immediately "stolen" by the faeries. In its stead is left a false Lilac which is really some kind of faerie "doll" and, amazingly, nobody notices that the girl has disappeared until much later when they realize that the "doll" is getting old too fast and behaving very strangely.
In a book like this, of course, it is pointless to ask why nobody called the cops.
Anyway , the storyline then shifts to Smokey's son, Auberon, who becomes the focus, as I see it, mainly so that the author can avoid investigating the Lilac situation on anything like a realistic plane. Instead, Auberon falls in love with a spanish girl who eventually disappears as well, never to be seen again, even though this is promised many times. Auberon descends into depression and the book wanders terribly.
FINALLY, Lilac shows up again, after twenty plus years but having aged only about six, and tries to convince the family that it has to attend the final meeting of the last fifty or so faeries. But, of course, nobody knows the way and Lilac promptly disappears again. Fifty more pages of pointless wandering leads us to the final fade out where dozens of plot threads are left unresolved and NOTHING is accomplished.
I really had to wonder what happened to the editor on this one. Maybe they had a deadline and maybe they had already made a commitment based on the earlier, more promising chapters. But all that build-up means just a bigger mess in the end.
Rewrite!
Book Review: Crowley & the changing world
Summary: 5 Stars
The changing world is a continual theme in Crowley's work. In the Aegypt trilogy it is worked out on personal, regional, and world-spanning scales. Here, he goes at it all in one volume, spread across several generations. In this novel, a family's bloodline carries the last traces of a receding magic. Against this backdrop of change, the relationship between the mundane world and the magical is played out by the two main characters, whose love is the through-line to the book. The narrative is not sequential, and we learn of the family's magic as we might learn of our in-laws--one wild story at a time. The result is a book in which the reader is obliged, perhaps more than is usual in the genre, to pull things together, and as with the fold-out bookplate examined by several of the characters in the course of the book, Little Big apparently can't be interpreted by any two the same way. However, for this reader the insight into essential tragedy of magic (and of the literature of magic), as well as magic's more entertaining possibilities was entertaining and thought-provoking.