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Jan 26, 2010

oriana rated it:

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 More...

39 comments like (58 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

mark rated it:

sometimes, when dreaming, i am aware of a complex and mysterious history to the at times strange but often mundane narrative of the dream itsef. i'll be running away from something, against some dark background, a house or castle or a school, who knows...although the drama of running is clear, there's often a feeling that so many things have already happened before i started running, things of which i'm only dimly aware, a whole story has happened or is happening in which i'm only getting bits & More...

14 comments like (16 people liked it)

May 19, 2011

Michael rated it:

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 thing More...

84 comments like (26 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2011

Simon rated it:

This is one of those books that is hard to talk about. Maybe best to describe by analogy.

So imagine a tangled ball of wool with which you are following a strand as it winds its way in around the other strands, in and out of the tangle until eventually you find the other end of the thread, somewhere not too far from where you started.

The narrative flows a bit like that. It nips back and forwards in time, hops from one character to another, spanning several generations of a sp More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Andrew rated it:

Little, Big is the greatest book I have ever read. It is living magic in text form, and it has a truly transformative effect on the reader. I understand that it meanders a bit in the middle section and goes off on a strange-ish quasi-political tangent toward the end, but everything is purposeful and comes together to achieve a singular effect - literally every single sentence is essential and purposeful to the grand narrative. When I finished it, I immediately felt like re-reading it to catch ev More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2008

Elizabeth rated it:

Lovely language. Interesting story. Quixotic sensibility. I was bored out of my mind. Couldn't finish it.

6 comments like (19 people liked it)

Oct 04, 2007

Bobby rated it:

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 More...

5 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 05, 2011

Lowed rated it:

Have read this a few years back.! Just a re- read! :)
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Whew!! This is my first re- read of this book. and I'd say I have missed a lot on my first read! Which is strange coz I usually pay attention to details, but for some reason something slipped! Tsk tsk!

Anyway, if you have not read this yet, you miss half, no scratch that! You won't really miss anything. Except perhaps that you would not be able to enjoy THAT REALLY GOOD book in the fantasy genre.

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4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2008

Sandi rated it:

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. T More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2007

Julian rated it:

I appreciate the entertainment merits of fantasy/science fiction, but after years of Dungeons and Dragons and reading the literature spawned from that (which seemed to always borrow from Lord of the Rings), I grew tired of the genre and more or less walked away from it (and Dungeons & Dragons - but that's another story). As a wedding gift a friend passed on a copy of Little Big. And I fell in love. Mr. Crowley's prose is beautiful, original and haunting. It captures the "magic" of More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Erica rated it:

I read the last 20 or so pages of this late at night, half-asleep which puts your mind in the same state as the characters (characters getting lost in the woods, forgetting who they are, talking to animals - more in line with the fuzzy dreaming brain). Everything in the book was leading up to those last few pages. The Tale! When will it end!? What will happen to justify all these whispered anticipations for it?

After seeing reviews of the book on here, I picked it up with great More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Brooke rated it:

Whenever critics describe a book as "ambitious," I'm always wary. Ambitious is sometimes just another word for "really, really long," and a good portion of the really, really long books I've read could have done the job better in fewer pages. John Crowley's Little, Big is called "the best fantasy written by an American" by one critic, but the A-word by another. Is it too long? Maybe just a bit, but the places where it dragged suffered from an unsympathetic character More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2007

Joyce rated it:

OK, I hated this book. It was too long and too boring. However, I was in them minority, as most of the other members of my book club found it enchanting. It's about an extended family which is linked to another dimension or fairy world. Most of them realize they are part of the (fairy) tale. Lots of comparisons to other works, like "Alice in Wonderland." My biggest problem with this work is that I'm a person with a type A personality, who likes to be in control of my world (or at least More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2011

Dan rated it:

Little, Big is the story fo a family that lives in a house called Edgewood, far to the north of The City. It follows the family from generation to generation. Let's just say fairies play a part in the lives of the Drinkwaters and their relatives.

The only book I can compare it to at the moment is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but that's more of a subject matter thing. The writing is very rich and detailed. While I was reading it, I thought it would be the best book I read that More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

May 10, 2007

kate rated it:

This book started out beautifully - it felt like a fantastical intermingling of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Alice in Wonderland". The writing was exquisite. By the second half, though, the story became weird, difficult to follow, and basically unbelievable. I don't mind a little fantasy, but this was farfetched and terribly underdeveloped. Worth reading for the first half, but don't feel too bad if you put it down and never pick it up again. The magic that slowl More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2010

Miss_otis rated it:

I tried to read this but just couldn't slog my way through it.

The jacket copy sounded really intriguing, but I didn't get halfway through it. The biggest problem I had with this book was that I felt tried far too hard to be Airy and Phantasmagorical and Mystically Vague and forgot that a plot was actually necessary. It wanders and doesn't actually get anywhere, the prose was overstuffed, and not a single character actually caught my attention. I was disappointed, beause it was a ver More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Angela rated it:

Awarded two stars for now, because, although I made it through the whole book, I found it a really slow read.

But I think maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for that type of book when I read it. I find images and ideas from the book coming to me months later - it's obviously made an impression. So it's scheduled for a re-read, and re-evaluation.

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 25, 2011

wally rated it:

so...this is from 1981.

this looks to be a good story......"that was the feeling. it was as though she stirred him with cornstarch. he had begun to thicken."

yes. thicken. crowley's voice...or, the voice of the distant narrator, is unique. although too i am reminded of others...padgett. he has a twangy way of saying things. still early, but looks to be a good read.

update: christmas day...evening, dark here, 535 pm 2011....and i'm back with this o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2008

George rated it:

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 distant. 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 More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2008

Jude rated it:

This is the cover - with the redhaired girl and the bubbles and the boy and the trout - of the book i picked up and put back and got to the door of the store with friends waiting and turned back and went back and bought.
And from then on the world was as it would not otherwise have been.

This is a tender and endless world of a story, a comfort and a wonder.
And i don't feel gooey about this, or wistful about everybody reading it.
It is not so much perfect as simply per More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2007

Alec rated it:

The writing in this book is incredible, and its depiction of the emotional reality of living in a large, tight-knit family is amazingly insightful and moving.

Little, Big is giant in scope -- it tells the stories of several generations in this family and of the people they fall in love with (though it never loses its continuity or momentum). It's a fantasy novel, too, but the fairy tale elements mostly serve, I think, as a way to communicate both the enchantment and the burden of bei More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 29, 2008

Robert rated it:

we don't live in a newtonian universe. for me this book is about the vast web of connections formed across space & through time with family and friends. the definition of 'family' becomes less certain and fades away into the distance as relationships are uncovered and more people start to fit into the family category as well as the friend category. we are all one huge family, and that family includes the stones and the trouts and the mouses and the flowers, not just the barnables and drinkwaters More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2012

Dulac3 rated it:

Ok, some Crowley I love and some Crowley...not so much. Unfortunately this one, the book that most consider his masterpiece, falls into the latter category for me. As always Crowley's mastery of prose is readily apparent, but you know what? This is a pretty dull book. Granted the kind of long, ambling family history that Crowley is writing here is rarely full of slap-bang action, but the pace here is often glacial and while there are, as always, sparkling moments studded throughout the book I ju More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 01, 2008

Eddie rated it:

This book is like life to me. A dangerous statement, but true! It has the feel of all the moments of my life as it unfolds. It has all the wisdom and subtle instruction by example that is necessary for a rich and various life. It limns many of the other layers of life that are left out of "realist" fiction, and so it's been called fantasy, and until recently that is the section where you would always find this book. But this is reality fiction, and it's hard for me to imagine a person More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2008

Mark rated it:

Crowley's tour-de-force is considered by some to be the pinnacle of the modern American Novel. I found it engaging and well-written, but just wasn't quite as captivated as Harold Bloom (and a few of my friends, for that matter).

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Claire rated it:

This book had some absolutely beautiful lines and the story was very involved. It was good read if a bit difficult at time because it is told somewhat indirectly. The beginning was so beautifully told - the start to Smoky & Alice's relationship, the house, Ariel's memories, and the story of August is all amazing. But the very best of it seemed heavily weighted to the first half of the book. After all that beginning, I sort of hoped for a better payoff at the end - something a bit more specta More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2011

Isabel rated it:

It was the year's longest day, Sophie knew, but why should it be called Midsummer when summer has just begun? Maybe only because it was the day, the first day, on which summer seemed endless; seemed to stretch out before and behind limitlessly, and every other season was out of mind and unimaginable. Even the stretch of the screen-door's spring and the clack of its closing behind her as she went in, and the summer odor of the vestibule, seemed no longer new, and were as though they has always be More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 05, 2011

Brian rated it:

I really didn't care for Little, Big. It was slow and hard to get into and even boring. The story jumps around a lot, but nothing really happens and the characters are not that interesting. I thought the book was pretty pretentious with no real substance to back it up. The plot was slow and byzantine, meandering, confusing, convoluted and even non-existent. Lots of things happened for nonsensical reasons and there was no real resolution to storylines. I really don't understand why this book is s More...

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Nov 11, 2011

Grburbank rated it:

Imagine you are a stranger in your own life and to your own family. That is the fate of Smokey Barnable who knows his wife's family thinks they talk to faeries, but he doesn't believe a word of it.

Little, Big is the history of this singular family who live on the border of another realm. It is a secret history of America. And it is a very great love story.

In this novel the reader will:
visit Edgewood which is not to be found on any map
learn Brother North-Wind's secre More...

0 comments like

Sep 20, 2011

manuti rated it:

Si hubiese leído la reseña de sedice.com (lo digo por lo de libro difícil) antes de ponerme con este libro lo mismo ni lo leo, pero una vez que empecé seguí adelante con la esperanza de que mejorara mucho, ya que el autor me gusta bastante desde que leí El verano del pequeño San John.

Pero es que me ha costado muchísimo leerlo (poniendo en peligro mi intención de leer 12 libros al año), y además me ha decepcionado mucho, por lo que solo le voy a dar 1 estrella.

Supongo que la decepción esta m

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