I've given a lot of thought to this review: how to begin, how to describe this story, how to explain my utter adoration for it, and most importantly, what words I might use to successfully make everyone read this book right now.As you can probably imagine, I've come up rather short on all counts. How do you talk about a book which seems to either redefine or cause to shrivel all the normal descriptors one attaches to works of fiction? I mean, strictly speaking, you'd have to call this an epic fantasy, I suppose. Wait! You didn't let me finish. Because that's not it, not really. I mean, it's not really just epic, because it actually seems to encompass the whole damn world, to cover all of time, kind of. And it's more of an occult novel than a fantasy novel, if anything, I guess. I mean, it's a real story, set in real-life New York, partly upstate and partly in our big bad city. It just sort of so happens that, well, everyone in the story is part of the Tale, which only some of them can understand, an no one can predict, not really. See, now wait again! Because now you'll think it's some big silly meta thing, which it is not not not. Look. Little, Big is a novel about a family. For real this time. It's about Smoky Barnable, our earnest, humble, erstwhile sometimes-hero. Smoky meets and falls in love with one of the most beautiful characters I have ever had the pleasure of traveling five-hundred-odd pages with, Daily Alice. Daily Alice lives in Edgewood, which is in upstate New York, and the book opens with Smoky making the trek upstate for his wedding. He has been given a series of inexplicable instructions (walk don't ride, wear clothing borrowed not bought, etc.), which he is doing his best to follow, though he doesn't understand why he must. He must because it is part of the Tale. He has been promised to Daily Alice, kind of, maybe, or well, someone has been promised to her anyway, and she hopes it's him, but she has already decided that she will have him anyway, she loves him that much, even if he is not the one promised.This is a taste of the world you step into in Little, Big, which goes on to follow Smoky and Alice and their families and their neighbors and their children and some of those children's children too, for four generations, backwards and forwards. It may well be a fantasy, but it is done with such a light touch, with such subtle mentions of fairies and talking fish and worlds within worlds, that you could easily miss or dismiss them, you could write them off as the magic-belief of children, or the ramblings of old women who have spent too long abed. And I haven't even told you this yet, as this review draws longer and appallingly longer: John Crowley could have spent all five hundred pages just describing a single tree, and I would have followed him along every goddamn branch. Which is to say, this book is suffused, constantly and shockingly, with some of the most astonishingly beautiful prose I have ever read – equally as stunning when describing twilight falling over the City or the endless quest for love.Here are some other wonderful things about this book: * In the City, the true oracles are the bums who lurk on the subway in broken shoes muttering to themselves. * At one point a maybe-fake, maybe-evil baby (who eats live coals) is blown up.* The only tie to the world of 'them' – the creatures who may or may not know how the Tale will come out – is a deck of pseudo-Tarot cards, the reading of which takes at least an entire lifetime to begin to understand. * Included are some of the most powerful, most potent descriptions of taking hallucinogenic drugs that I have ever read (and that's not even what's happening in the story).* Did I mention the dialogue? It is so good, so true, so utterly believable. * This book made me – a sworn cynic, a jaded literary snob, a snarky bitch who doesn't even know what 'sentiment' means any longer – cry, several times. * Everyone in the book is named for nature: Violet Bramble, John Drinkwater, Marge Juniper, Mrs. Underhill, George Mouse, Lilac, the Rooks, the Dales, and on and on. And now look. Because I know that I have done a woefully inadequate job of making you see, I am going to here transcribe a long-ish passage from the book. This takes place very early on, when Smoky and Daily Alice are still just falling in love. She is telling him about a time when she was walking in the woods just after a storm and saw a rainbow off in the distance. "It was a rainbow, but bright, and it looked like it came down just – there, you know, not far; I could see the grass, all sparkling and stained every color there. The sky had got big, you know, the way it does when it clears at last after a long rainy time, and everything looked near; the place the rainbow came down was near; and I wanted more than anything to go and stand in it – and look up – and be covered with colors." Smoky laughed. "That's hard," he said. She laughed too, dipping her head and raising the back of her hand to her mouth in a way that already seemed heartstirringly familiar to him. "It sure is," she said. "It seemed to take forever." "You mean you – " "Every time you thought you were coming close, it would be just as far off, in a different place; and if you came to that place, it would be in the place you came from; and my throat was sore with running, and not getting any closer. But you know what you do then – " "Walk away from it," he said, surprised at his own voice but Somehow sure this was the answer. "Sure. That isn't as easy as it sounds, but – " "No, I don't suppose." He had stopped laughing. " – but if you do it right – " "No, wait," he said. " – just right, then . . . " "They don't really come down, now," Smoky said. "They don't, not really." "They don't here," she said. "Now listen, I followed my dog Spark; I let him choose, because he didn't care, and I did. It took just one step, and turn around, and guess what." "I can't guess. You were covered in colors." "No. It's not like that. Outside, you see colors inside it; so, inside it – " "You see colors outside it." "Yes. The whole world colored, as though it were made of candy – no, like it was made of a rainbow. A whole colored world as soft as light all around as far as you can see. You want to run and explore it. But you don't dare take a step, because it might be the wrong step – so you only look, and look. And you think: Here I am at last." She had fallen into thought. "At last," she said again softly. See? See? They're just ordinary people, to whom (maybe? maybe not?) extraordinary events are always happening.Well anyway there you are. If I can't convert you, and Mr. Crowley himself can't convert you, then you are just unconvertable and I'm done trying. But if you are even the tiniest bit intrigued by my very long, rambling, adulatory speech here, please, I beseech you, go get this amazing, astonishing, riveting, spectacular book. It really will blow your mind. It did mine.
---------------------------------------------------------------------The most readily evident characteristic of this book is the beautiful, almost musical prose that weaves throughout the telling of this “Tale”. The world created is seductive and at times dreamlike. The characters are so well introduced and sustained that you feel that they are good friends, even as you know their weaknesses.For these reasons only, this book is worth the effort. But other reasons also abound.Please, read this book slowly. This work feels Romantic, in the artistic sense. And the pace that may feel somnambulent to some, felt, to me, to be like a Chopin piano etude—a slow relaxing homage to the existence of the moment. Patient attention is required; but it is also rewarded. The reader's attention to the miracles of the moment sets the stage for the lifting of the veil. To say anything else about this book is more difficult for me. You may find blurbs concerning its plot and context by reading Goodreads book pages and the book backs. I do not want to further pigeon-hole this plot than it already has been because I feel that genre is usually irrelevant in quality literature.What I feel is important is the “Tale” that is repeatedly referenced in this work. I'll try to explain:This book assumes the existence of another traditional world (Faerie), perhaps another half to our single world. Because I live in the rural Southwestern US, I have at least a superficial understanding of the “other” worlds intimately alive to the living native cultures and peoples of my adopted home. The traditional animate, “magical” characteristics of the mountains, rivers, clouds, bears, trees, and all of creation is an accepted truth for many of my friends. My own long life has led me to similar experiences. This is not Fantasy. This is a global traditional worldview, shared by many traditional peoples on many continents today. In this book, the traditional European world of Faerie seems to best express that worldview.Back to the “Tale”. Many central characters in this book refer to a “Tale” that is being lived in common with the beings from the “other” world. This “Tale” may be a collaboration between beings “here” and beings “there” . Or this “Tale” may be a wholly manufactured process from the world of Faerie. Whatever is true, this “Tale” is central to the experience of this book.This “Tale” is also central to my own confusion. In Little, Big there is an apparent frisson between this world and the world of Faerie. The resolution of that frisson seems central to this “Tale” as well as to this book. However, as the book draws towards conclusion, there are many pieces connected; but many enigmas left as they are. Many resolutions reached; but many plot twists left untied. Herein lie my confusions. What are the conclusions? What now is known?But these inexpressible uncertainties (for me anyway) may well be the intended experience.Whatever is true, Little,Big is a masterful, complex, and lovingly beautiful work. I may reread it.
What do You think about Little, Big (2006)?
One distinction Crowley's Little,Big has from other Fantasy novels is that it's various magical fauna seem so seamlessly integrated into the fictional fabric. So often it seems, with SF/Fantasy novels, the narrative is just a flimsy bit of gauze whose purpose is only to prop up it's various fantastic creatures or concepts. Reading "Little,Big" you find every last detail infused with magic, wonder and mystery. When you encounter a talking stork, you think "Of course, why wouldn't the stork talk?". A lot of the Gnostic and Hermetic concepts that Crowley explores in the Aegypt tetraology are also here in some form. They're given a less complete treatment, but nonetheless permeate the novel, including the "Art of Memory" as practiced by Giordano Bruno in Aegypt, and by Ariel Hawskquill and Auberon Drinkwater here. Also similar to Aegypt is the use of a hidden "war" which is waged in the background by hidden (higher?) supernatural powers. Humans are only pawns, sometimes agents in this war; never privy to the complete picture,or the true nature of their purpose in the larger scheme. I believe this is derived from the Gnostic notion of the "Archons", but this is just a guess.The Drinkwaters, the family which the novel revolves around, refer to this larger story which they are just a part of as "The Tale". They have some knowledge of this Tale, partly because of a genetic trait - a "magic" gene, if you want - within the family that allows them to talk to fairies, animals and for some of them to augur the future through a singular Tarot card deck. But their "chosen" status also seems to be due to their location - their house, "Edgewood" seems to be built at the edges of a magical forest (The Wild Wood - a fuzzy Milne reference? The Aegypt books are weirdly replete with Winnie-The-Pooh allusions), which appears to be a door of sorts to another world. The house, Edgewood, is described as "infundibular" - seeming to grow larger the further inside you go - which echoes the novel's ontology as expounded by Violet's Father and theosophist Theodore Bramble, which to summarize and very roughly paraphrase: their world is just the outer layer of a series of worlds which can be thought of as concentric, each one containing a smaller door to the next world (the Edgewood house itself being a door of sorts), until finally the door to the center world, the infinite world of Faerie, is so small it cannot be found. The narrative of Little,Big also seems infundibular - the deeper into the story you get, the more it's world is revealed to you.Another Gnostic echo from the Aegypt tetraology is the story of Sophia - which resonates with the characters of both Rose Ryder and Samantha Rasmussen in the Aegypt books and then with Sylvie and the (always sleeping and dreaming) Sophie in Little,Big. I'm sure there are tons more and I could go on endlessly - this book is rich with detail and suffused with so many ideas it could be pondered for a lifetime, it seems to me. It moves slowly, meditatively exploring the lives and thoughts of various members of the Drinkwater clan through several generations (non-chronologically, too - the book includes a family tree, thankfully). Despite it's somnolent pacing I found it endlessly fascinating, and ends beautifully if sadly too, in what I can only think to call a Shakespearean reverie (the similarity of Auberon's given name to the Oberon of A Midsummer's Night Dream is no accident, and a comparison halfway through the book of Silvie to Titania is an early foreshadowing of their destinies).
—Bobby
What a terrible shame. I was so set to love this book. The blurb was good, magical realism is one of my favourite things, the book cover is so pretty, I was so sure I was in for a five star read. And for about 100 pages everything went well. Then I realised that despite the beautiful writing style there was nothing for me to like. The story was thin, the characters barely existed , much of the writing became incomprehensible. I didn't give up and trudged on to the bitter end. And I still do not understand any of it. This is definitely a book you either love or hate. I did not love it.
—Phrynne
There is no way one could ever adequately describe “Little, Big” by John Crowley. It is an epic of minute proportions. Its 500+ pages skip back and forth through several generations and between the “real” world and the fairy world. The reason I put the word “real” in quotes is because the real world of “Little, Big” bears no more resemblance to our world. While this novel has a lot of characters, they are more like sketches than sculptures. You never get a sense of any solidness to them. They float through their lives, controlled by powers they don’t understand. The entire book has a dream-like quality to it, and dreams are indeed an important part of the story. There is a passage in Book 6, Chapter I that pretty much sums up the whole book. It’s part of young Auberon’s mental process as he’s working on scripts for a popular soap opera.“Why hadn’t anyone before caught the secret of it? A simple plot was required, a single enterprise which concerned all the characters deeply, and which had a grand sweet simple single resolution: a resolution, however, that would never be reached. Always approached, keeping hopes high, making disappointments bitter, shaping lives and loves by its inexorable slow progress toward the present: but never, never reached.”“Little, Big” isn’t exactly the kind of book you can read in one sitting or a few. It needs to be nibbled at, not devoured. Fortunately, the format is very conducive to reading small bits at a time. I have to confess that I found myself sneaking peeks at what was happening ahead. Since the book meanders back and forth through time, reading ahead really made no difference whatsoever. It actually helped quite a lot to read the ending about halfway through the book because the events made much more sense in context of the ending. Because this book meanders and because it really doesn’t have much of a plot, I don’t even know if you could consider knowing the ending as really spoiling it. (Don’t worry, I won’t give away the ending.) The one thing that really struck me about “Little, Big” is that I really had no concept of where I was in time while reading this book. It seemed like both the city and the country were frozen in time and the only way to determine the “when” was by observing which characters were around and/or picking up on subtle clues, like a Model T or a Buick station wagon with wood trim.
—Sandi
