Little, Big

This book astounded me. Not in a good way. I expected to like "Little, Big" quite a bit from what I'd heard about it. But, like the Drinkwater house, it looks smaller on the outside than it feels from inside. Not in a good way. I mean the book feels like it's a thousand pages. Some people like it, as you can tell by other reviews: the language is often quite clever, it ends on a semi-strong note, and it plays with myth in some interesting ways. These are all good things. Bad things? Well, the characters aren't compelling, the clever language is often stilted and ponderously slow, and almost nothing happens. On top of that, the fantastical aspects of this book were never surprising or especially interesting. When it comes to the characters, we run through four generations in about 600 pages. This gives us slightly more than a hundred pages per generation to get to know the characters, and Crowley clearly needs more pages than that to make them interesting. Only in the last of the four generations did I like any of them (Auberon and Sylvie). Before that, the motives of the characters were sketchy at best, and it didn't feel like any of the characters were DOING anything; they were waiting for something to happen. As a reader, I was doing the same thing. Okay, here's the plot. A man marries into a family that lives in a gigantic, mysterious house in Edgewood. For generations, this family has been interacting in various strange ways with the Faerie folk that live in the forest around them. The family is part of a great Story, and they don't know quite what this story is going to be. Some members of the family come into direct contact with the fae, while others yearn to see them and are never able to. A few live lives of tragedy as a result of this proximity with the mythic side of reality, while others live semi-normal lives. Being part of a grand Story? Having a Destiny? These are meaningless designations unless it ends up BEING a grand story. Or unless it feels like a destiny is reached. You can't entertain me by assuring me these people are Living Some Grand Story, when I can see clearly that Nothing is Happening. They're all hanging out at a house in the woods, going through the process of forgetting about their connection to the faerie realm because they believe this is the only safe thing for the family. Then, finally on page 450 or so, it looks like there's GONNA be a plot. The kind of plot where stuff is going to happen. But don't worry: it's a false alarm. Things DO happen, but they're safely off-screen and vague. Then the end pops up predictably and....well, bleck. How else could it have ended? I mean, did anyone NOT know it would end this way? And is the ending crafted in a way that's especially insightful? Let me be honest about something, though: I don't like generation-spanning fiction. Pick the generation that is interesting and focus in, don't give me 400 pages of background about the people who won't be involved in whatever climax you've cooked up. If someone isn't even alive during your story's climax, then why do you think it's a good idea to tell me about them? But if these characters had come to life for me, I would've probably still enjoyed the book. Unfortunately, at all of the most dramatic moments of the story, characters did things that seemed to come out of the blue. Why did this married guy and this woman suddenly have an affair? No idea. Why did his wife react the way she did? No idea. I was supposed to be intrigued by all of this I suppose, but it felt flat to me because of my lack of interest in the characters. Crowley reimagines myth in a way that is often vivid but never surprising, and that's unfortunately the strongest part of this book. In sum, I don't recommend it.

A massive, epic book that spans decades and generations of a family that lives next door to fairies and magic. Fascinating and sharply drawn, and yet obtuse enough that I am not quite sure what to glean from it.

A book that requires focus and care...I felt the author was multiple steps ahead of me at all times. Yet I was so taken with the language, the plot, the sense of place. Leaving the reading experience enriched and knowing this will be a re-read.

It's obviously a classic, and it's beautifully written, but this book broke me. I simply could not get through it.