az- Little, Big: John Crowley: "'On a certain day in June, 19_, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town...'"
The epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end.
this is also on the shelf near the novels just catalogued, also a favorite read during that time (seattle - early chicago) ...but not of the group: not as closedly a 'novel' (rather ~ a tale, an epic, a story of story) and not one just happened to come across, not just published, not undiscovered - hardly - rather a favorite to many: 4 1/2 stars
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in fact I came to it as a favorite of several coworkers at ebbco (eric I think, and paul c also?). then sent to dad, dimit, clare, dB. which puts me in company with az reviewers who say they sent copies to friends, keep copies to lend. dB took it up, talked with me about it. as he has other things, thank you dB. clare maybe did also tell me she read it? not sure, will ask, and not sure about dimit. I think dad did, to his credit I think he does always read what I give him eg Calasso before mr.brooks-ing (is that the uncle's name? Middlemarch. who would say "at one time I went in for that sort of thing") about it to me.
A huge, sprawling Tale in the classic John Gardner sense. Beautiful, allusive, and endlessly inventive.
az list "Favorite Fictions"-The book opens with a young man named Smokey Barnable hitchhiking his way from the City to a place called Edgewood, where he is going to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater. From this charming beginning, "Little, Big" goes on to trace the history of the Drinkwater family, whose story is quite literally a Fairy Tale that they don't quite understand themselves although they know that they are in it and of Edgewood, an amazing house "of four floors, seven chimneys, three hundred and sixty-five stairs, and fifty-two doors", which is a doorway to the Fairies. "Little, Big" jumps back and forth across five Drinkwater generations as the meaning of the Tale and their place and purpose in it becomes clearer, while Smoky (and later his son Auberon) struggle with their disbelief.
John Crowley's superb and gorgeous writing just sweeps you along. There are all kinds of odd digressions and even odder characters (including the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa). Many times I found myself paging back through the book looking for small references that I half-remembered which came up again with greater significance many pages later.
yes I like that. The last 50 pages or so (as the Tale reaches its conclusion) are simply heart-wrenching.
-Edgewood is an unsurpassingly complicated house, built around the turn of the century, by an architect whose wife could see...faeries. They are the faeries of A Midsummer Night's Dream, embodying the qualities of mischievousness, whimsy, capriciousness and untrustworthiness. The faeries are also an odd mix of power and vulnerability, but their spirit is in decline. Much of what happens in Little, Big happens because the faeries must rejuvenate the old with the new.
The story begins with Smoky Barnable, an ordinary man who marries into an extraordinary family (the architect's great-granddaughter). It is Smoky who introduces us to Edgewood and to the subtle, but fantastic presence that his wife's family seems to take for granted. Smoky has a difficult time adjusting and sometimes he feels as though he's the only sane person in an otherwise insane world. The other residents of Edgewood see it differently; they somehow realize that a grand scheme is being played out and that once it is, their lives, as well as the lives of the faeries, will take on a luminous new meaning.
As we near the end of the century, Smoky's son Auberon leaves Edgewood for the City. It is, however, not quite the magical city that Smoky knew. There is a depression, nothing runs quite like it should and a feeling of dread looms over all. Against this background of dread, Auberon meets and falls in love with Sylvie. It is her disappearance that provides the catalyst for the final act of the faeries' scheme.
this part I recall much less well. once Smoky not at the center, I was less attentive? could reread, I think.Crowley conveys many emotions in this book: joy, sorrow, loss, lust but most of all, love. By the time you reach the end, you come to a slow but perfect understanding of why the faeries' rejuvenation is so crucial. This is a beautiful and beautifully-told tale.
-John Crowley's Little Big is a marvelously well written fairytale set in a bygone America that never was. Generations of the Drinkwater/Barnable clan live in a wonderfully mysterious house in the country whose grounds get larger the deeper you go into them and whose rooms and hallways don't always open into the same rooms and hallways you've entered from.
The girls in the family commune with the fairy kingdom that the house is a gateway to, and the boys in the family spend their lives trying to figure out if the fairies are real. These details, and many, many delightful others are somewhat secondary, however, to
the wonderful mood of the narrative, a melancholy dream state of the sense of wonder only children can seem to have in a world that in its smallness is the biggest they will ever inhabit. Crowley never hits a wrong note in the best of times and the worst, and the ending is supremely satisfying.
lovely-
