Little, Big by John Crowley

Little, Big opens with Smoky Barnable walking to Edgewood to get married to Daily Alice Drinkwater. Walking because he was told he must arrive on foot, not riding. Edgewood is a place that cannot be found on any maps. It is a house that is many houses inside one another, a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. The further in you go, the bigger it becomes.

Little, Big isn’t, however, just about Smoky and Daily Alice. It’s about five generations of the Drinkwater family and their close ties with Faerie. It’s about Edgewood, a mysterious house that seems to be as alive as any of the family members.

It took me almost a hundred pages to truly get into this book, but once I did, I fell in love. It happened one night when I stayed up late reading, and ended up falling asleep with the book in my arms. And then – has this ever happened to any of you? – I started dreaming in the language of the book. And I realized that I wanted to be inside the word of Little, Big. I was conquered. It had lured me in.

This novel reminded me of two others: A Hundred Years of Solitude and Lud-in-The-Mist. The first because of the beauty of the language, because of a certain poetic quality to some of the events described, because of the amount of times I found myself going back to look at the family tree (I don’t mean this in a bad way). The second because this too is a book about Faerie in which its inhabitants remain mostly hidden, lurking just behind the pages. It’s a book that shows the effects of magic, of wonder, on the lives of those whose path it crosses. Both Lud-in-The-Mist and Little, Big are books that make you feel like you are permanently about to discover something magic, something larger than life. And – ideally, at least – isn’t that how we like the world to feel like?

The plot of Little, Big is like a labyrinth in which it was a pleasure to get lost. The events are not always told chronologically. We travel back and forth from the time of Violet Branble and the construction of Edgewood, to the strange bargain with Faerie that her son August strikes, to Daily Alice and Smoke’s marriage, and to the adventures of their youngest son Auberon in the City. Also, the story is full of allusions, veiled or unveiled, to the works of Lewis Carroll, to Keats, to Arthur Rackman, to Thornton Burgess, and it largely incorporates the myth of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

Little, Big is a strange, hypnotic book in which more is suggested than said, and John Crowley is an author who rewards his readers’ perceptiveness. Although things often remain unspoken, you can see them moving between the lines, coming to life, gaining shape. Then they step out of the shadows and it's as if they'd been there all along.

The fact that the language of this novel ended up taking over my dreams was made easy by its hazy, sensual, otherworldly quality. Crowley’s writing reminded me of Bradbury’s at times – yes, it is that good. Here are a few of my favourite passages:

First she wanted to taste the sweat that shone on his throat and fragile clavicle; then he chose to undo the tails of her shirt, that she had tied up beneath her breasts; then, but then impatient they forgot about taking turns and quarrelled silently, eagerly over each other, like pirates dividing treasure long sought, long imagined, long withheld.

‘What I wonder is, maybe the world is growing older. Less all alive. Or is it only my growing older?’
‘Everybody always wonders that. I don’t think, really, anyone could feel the world grow older. Its life is far too long for that. What maybe you learn as you grow older is that the world is old—very old. When you’re young, the world seems young. That’s all.’

She yawned hugely and tried to speak at the same time, and laughed. ‘I said so you’re not going back?’
‘No.’
‘Even after you find your fortune?’
He didn’t say I’ve found it, thought it was true; he’d known it since they’d become lovers. Become lovers: like a wizardry, like frogs become princes.

Even though I loved Little, Big, I’ll be the first to admit that this novel will not please everyone. I can see how its suggestiveness, its illusiveness, its density and its slow pace could frustrate some readers. Little, Big takes patience, but I found it very, very rewarding. If you don’t mind a story that is more about mood than plot, a story where a great deal of the action takes place behind the curtains, a story in which much remains unsaid and is left unresolved, then this is for you. Pick up this book and let its spell lure you in.

You can read an interview with the author about this book here.