Little, Big by John Crowley

Little, Big is not a book to be read while under the influence of cold medicine. At least I think so, though for some readers the influence of cold medicine might enhance the Little, Big experience. For me, however, clearheadedness would have helped. A lot. Little, Big is a vast novel with a large cast of characters, and I probably wouldn't have finished it so quickly (that being a relative term) if I hadn't been under the weather. Maybe I wouldn't have finished it at all.

Little, Big is one of those novels that I'm glad I read, that I wished I enjoyed more fully, and that I wouldn't re-read. It is considered by many renowned writers and critics as the best American fantasy novel as yet written, and has influenced writers, like Matt Ruff and Neil Gaiman, whom I admire. I can definitely see their point; it's brilliant. But it's also dense, frustrating, and confusing.

In a nutshell, Little, Big is the story of Smoky Barnable, a man who flies under the radar of life, an "anonymous" man, who becomes enmeshed within a Fairy Tale when he meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater. Daily Alice's family lives in a vast house of many rooms (both real and imaginary) in Edgewood, a place that exists in America, though it can't be found on any maps. Smoky becomes part of a Tale he neither understands nor believes in, though his part in it is crucial to its continuation.

I struggled a bit with this novel because I alternately wanted it to continue and couldn't wait for it to end. As I was reading, I often felt like the character Auberon did when suddenly confronted with a shocking revelation:

It's not all over, then. That had been the thought he had begun to think as soon as he entered the old kitchen, or rather not to think but to know, to know by the rising of the hair on his nape and the weird swarm of feeling, the feeling that his eyes were crossing and yet seeing more clearly than before.

Reading this novel depends upon your flexibility and willingness to just ride the wave of the text. The characters themselves are blindly making their way through experiences they always seem on the verge of understanding, but never quite comprehend, and as a reader, you don't know any more than they do. There's a sort of reader/character camaraderie in that.

And the characters are lovely; their individual stories and struggles are often heartbreaking. The descriptive passages in Little, Big are glorious, atmospheric. The tale itself is intriguing and frequently captivating. It is all of these elements of the novel that kept me reading, though when I finally put it down, I was both relieved and as uncertain about my understanding of it as I was when I began.

After I finished Little, Big, I cast about on the internet to see if anyone had written a review about it that could shed more light on it for me. I found an excellent 2005 review by Russ Allbery that showed me I was not alone in the dual feeling of appreciating and being frustrated by this amazing book. To read Allbery's review, click here. He gets 5 stars for covering a lot more territory of the novel much more clearly than I have.