Little, Big by John Crowley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Little, Big
Book Review: One of those books you remember forever
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is so successful on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin. Other reviewers have discussed the plot, so I won't go into that. I will just say that I am one of the folks who read every edition printed "under the sign of the unicorn" in the now legendary series published by Ballantine in the '60s and '70s. I have enjoyed fantasy from Machen to MacDonald to contemporaries like Powers, Blaylock, and Melville. But this book is so good that it enters into the pantheon of those few greats that actually seem to be numenous in themselves. This book is unforgettable. This story of worlds within worlds and the imprint of architypes is a must read for anyone who loves fantasy, or just really good books!Book Review: Quality fantasy literature
Summary: 5 Stars
John Crowley's Little, Big is, in essence, a tale of a tale, and one family's role in the like. His poetic narrative beautifully lures the reader in, dropping subtle hints and clues as to the overall happenings, but skillfully leaving the reader in the dark. Far from frusturating, this air of mystery in which the entirety of the book is wreathed keeps the reader actively engaged and constantly formulating new theories. Crowley manages to bridge the gap between fantasy and literature, as Little, Big is an exemplarey testament to either genre. If you're in search of an epic, vivid, and engaging masterpeice, you'll be hard pressed to do much better.Book Review: Size matters
Summary: 5 Stars
John Crowley's "Little, Big" is a particularly challenging work of fantasy to read and describe because it is not so much a story as it is about storytelling. Although written by an American in 1981, it often looks like a novel that came from an Englishman in 1881, immersed as it is in a Victorian mode, as though Lewis Carroll had lived into the automotive age and decided to incorporate elements from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" into an epic of magic and madness.
Shakespeare's play is clearly an inspiration, as the essence of "Little, Big" is founded on fairies, pixies, brownies, sprites, sylphs, dryads--i.e., mythological personifications of nature--although most of the characters are (apparently) human. The genesis of the story (or the Tale, as it is referred to throughout the novel) is the marriage of Smoky Barnable, an average, unassuming young man from the mundane world, to a fantastically beautiful and tall girl named Daily Alice Drinkwater, whose family is somehow (or should I say Somehow) connected to the supernatural. The Drinkwaters live in a large, bizarrely constructed house called Edgewood which, not unlike a smaller version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, is a gothic manor of labyrinthine and spatially illogical architecture surrounded by a demesne of ornate gardens and wooded landscapes and seems almost to exist in an alternate realm of its own, separated from the real world.
The novel does acknowledge the "real" world, but only obliquely, like a surrealistic painting. Smoky and Daily Alice's son Auberon, perplexed by the secrets of the Drinkwater dynasty and desiring to make a living on his own as a writer, comes to the City (transparently New York) to live with his cousin George Mouse, who actually has a farm. It is here that Auberon will eventually meet his Titania, and here also that a distant relation, an old woman mystic named Ariel Hawksquill, will contend with Russell Eigenblick, a tyrant with an ancient past and a future that poses danger for the Tale.
If none of this sounds like the constitution of a cohesive novel, be aware that "Little, Big" has little interest in the conventions of literary genre and instead seeks to achieve a phantasmagorical effect. To this end, Crowley weaves an intricate tapestry of concepts from history, mythology, and his own imagination, employing tarot cards, talking animals, the Holy Roman Empire, a contraption called the Cosmo-Opticon, an orrery (keep a dictionary handy) powered by a perpetual-motion machine, while Auberon's three sisters spin, measure, and cut thread like the Fates. This is heavy, complex, philosophical material to be read with patience and an open mind, not for the common fantasy reader who is hoping for an easy, banal plot.
Crowley's rich, colorful prose pays lavish attention to detail, contrasting the tranquil idyll of Edgewood with the faceless modernity of the City, but even more notably it maintains the narrative in a certain nebulous state, as though the characters were passing in and out of each other's dreams. Everywhere is the thrill that something to be revealed is barely out of reach, and little by little the pieces come together like a finely cut jigsaw puzzle. This book is a marvel; a massively enjoyable journey into the myriad possibilities of post-Victorian fantasy.
Book Review: The Key to My Indulgent Melancholy
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I began reading Little, Big I got about half way through before I lost track of the slowly twisting narrative and lost interest. Then, some years later, I started reading it again, and, somehow, the characters and plot presented themselves to me in altered perspective, as if they'd subtly shifted position within the pages since the last time I'd picked up the book. My second read-through was revelatory. Now, each year when Autumn advances and the light starts turning the watery yellow that heralds the shift into a New York winter, I pick this book up and read it cover to cover. I like to read it beneath a duvet in the late afternoon during October or have my wife read it to me while I'm in the bathtub in the early evening in November. Somehow it makes me feel incredibly melancholic in the most delightful way. For the other 51 weeks of the year I alternate between cold pragmatism, emotional and psychological discomfort, and genuine cheeriness, but while reading Little, Big I find myself thinking that life is bittersweet in all sorts of difficult-to-articulate ways, and during the week or so I'm reading it, I wander around my apartment indulging myself in prolonged, maudlin sighs. When asked "what's wrong?" I merely shake my head, then act as if making an effort to speak, then just shake my head again as if overcome. Does life get any more sweet? Does it get any more bitter? Certainly not in my limited sphere of experience. In my memory house, Little, Big occupies an entire annex.Book Review: Well-written but over-rated masterpiece
Summary: 3 Stars
Well, yes, this is a good book. It's been hailed as a literary masterpiece and it probably is. However, the book has no plot. There is no real sense of "conflict" that drives the characters. There is no real "resolution" to what passes for plot in LITTLE, BIG. No real character growth or epiphanies in the end.What is exceptional about this book is, as everyone has pointed out, the stellar quality of the actual writing. Its almost a 700 page lyrical poem. Because it has no plot, you can open the book anywhere and start reading, set it aside, open it up tomorrow at a different place and it won't make any difference to your comprehension of the story. No one chapter is contingent on the chapter that precedes it. No one chapter ever really resolves anything.
Also its fantasy elements are very few and far between. Only Crowley's prose style keeps the fantasy element alive just by the lyrical nature of the writing itself. You _know_ you're in a fantasy world; but much of the time nothing ever really happens and very little of the novel stays with you after you're done.
Yet, this is a book to be recommended, if only as a sui generis type of literary fantasy. I think Crowley wanted to write something like Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, but overshot the goal in LITTLE, BIG. (He certainly can't match Garcia Marquez's gift for the fantastic.)
I can't tell you how often I wanted the book just to end . . . and how many times it could have ended at any one place but didn't. Honestly I can't say that I enjoyed this book. But I was impressed by it.