Little, Big
John Crowley's masterfulLittle, Bigis the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.
Stats for nerds
11recommend
20mentions
14people
2010–2026years
75% recommend20% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Maybe not the most discussed author on HN, but still thought I would post.
John Crowley was a rare breed among American writers in that he was an accomplished science fiction and fantasy writer who was also recognized by the mainstream establishment. Harold Bloom included Little, Big in his "The Western Canon", for example.
I've not read the later Crowley works, but The Deep, Engine Summer, and Little, Big are all among my favorite books.
- Little, Big by John Crowley. Also everything else he's written.
- I would check out John Crowley, starting with Little, Big. One of the great American prose stylists.
Hilary Mantel is very good. I haven't read the Wolf Hall books, but A Place of Greater Safety is beautiful and deserves to be better known.
I would also nominate Gene Wolfe, especially The Book of the Sun. Fits very well with the subject matter of Nabokov, as it is also a clever metatextual puzzle, albeit a very different kind.
- Did you ever read Crowley's Little, Big? If those series you name form different columns in the periodic table of fantasy, I would say this one novel is in its own column.
- There is a beautiful bit in Little, Big by John Crowley. At the start of the book one of the characters is working checking entries in the telephone directory and is amused that the system has confused saint and street to produce Church Of All Streets and the Seventh Saint Bar. Later in the book both locations are mentioned, and it turns out were correctly named in the telephone directory.
- If you have read a lot of fantasy, there's a good chance that your favorite is a book that was popular at some time. My favorite, for example, is John Crowley's Little, Big. It's not obscure! It won critical acclaim and wide readership in 1981.
Most popular books become obscure books, given enough time. (Reading Les Miserables, I had to consult the footnotes repeatedly for Victor Hugo's allusions to then-popular novels and novelists, almost none of which remain popular today.) If you're a serious reader the chances are diminished that your favorite book is something that has just recently been written. But it's also likelier than random chance that your favorite book was once popular, because as you note there's generally a positive correlation between quality and popularity.
