Little, Big by John CrowleyMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
LB is lush, beautiful, and strange. It is one of those books, also, that sent me scurrying for other sources to help make sense of what I am reading. The language is poetic, but not dense. The characters are memorable, but like the book, a little removed and detached. I found myself reading this book from a distance, as opposed to feeling involved and part of the story. Which again is also apt, because the book is ultimately about a Tale and one lone family whose responsibility it is to spin it by acting out an ages old set of circumstances set forth by outside forces. The Story which this family enacts is theirs alone and sets them apart, literally it seems, from the rest of the world. Despite the aloofness of the novel, however, I found LB to be rewarding and rich. It is not a casual read, but thick with allusions to other tales, fables, and myths. John Crowley does not simply do this to flex his highly developed literary muscles, but the very nature of his Tale depends upon the existence of these other established ones.
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