- Paperback: 560 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (Mar 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060937939
- ISBN-13: 978-0060937935
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.3 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 691,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
A magical, funny, eloquent, unforgettable fantasy about a house filled with enchantment and the strange folk who inhabit it.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Edgewood is many houses, all put inside each other, or across each other. It's filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment: the further in you go, the bigger it gets. Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, comes to Edgewood, her family home, where he finds himself drawn into a world of magical strangeness. Crowley's work has a special alchemy - mixing the world we know with an imagined world which seems more true and real. Winner of the World Fantasy Award, Little, Big is eloquent, sensual, funny and unforgettable, a truly Fantasy Masterwork.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
On a certain day in June, 19-, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
On a certain day in June, 19-, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Little Big is a long and charming book of the kind now rarely written, gently paced, sensuously descriptive and beatifully narrated and plotted. In density it compares to Lord of the Rings or Gormenghast, which may be the reason for it's relative lack of success.
It is not a conventional fantasty, eschewing the cod-Tolkienesque props of much more conventional and imitative work. It is a much more ambitious novel; more in the style of a family saga than an epic quest or coming of age.
It proves that there is a vitality in fantasy and it may be re-invented from generation to generation.
If you like fantasty - good fantasy, like LeGuin, Peake, Cordwainer Smith, or Geoff Ryman, then this is a book you should not pass up. The closing chapters have some of the most moving passages I have read, comparing to Gawain's death in Le Morte D'Arthur or Fuchia's suicide in Gormenghast. Yet this is not a sad book, too much joy and love are in it for it to be that.
Read it. The things that make us happy make us wise :-)
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first picked up this book in the mid eighties, and selected it purely on a value for money basis ie. Big fat paperback, dirt cheap. Well, i read it and found it a truly immersive experience. I enjoyed the development of the characters especially Smokey, the novel settings and concepts like Old Law Farm or the many houses within Edgewood. And the circular references kept me flipping back and forth to remind myself where i had spotted characters or names before(ie Church of All Streets which is mentioned in passing in the first chapter, then becomes a major plot feature in the last section of the story).
But most of all is the fine quality of the writing which at times can make you catch you're breath at the originality and pure vividness of a phrase or a metaphor.
I realise that this may sound OTT, i even thought that that i could be mistaken at one point, however i re-read it every couple of years and it still has the power to stun me. And i spot details that i have missed every time. This is a dense and time consuming read which requires some commitment, but i feel it is one of the most well realised and complete novels i have ever read.
happy to see it in print again because my two copies have been thumbed to destruction.
But most of all is the fine quality of the writing which at times can make you catch you're breath at the originality and pure vividness of a phrase or a metaphor.
I realise that this may sound OTT, i even thought that that i could be mistaken at one point, however i re-read it every couple of years and it still has the power to stun me. And i spot details that i have missed every time. This is a dense and time consuming read which requires some commitment, but i feel it is one of the most well realised and complete novels i have ever read.
happy to see it in print again because my two copies have been thumbed to destruction.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first read 'Little, Big' in the dark days of the early '80s, and it was a shining light. Wise, sad, funny, poetic, this is the most truthful 'fantasy' I've read, getting right to the core of human nature, our dreams and follies, and our attempts to find meaning in a world we don't understand. As in all Crowley's books, the world is much stranger than we expect. This present version of the world is ending, and the novel traces one family's involvement with this process in an almost unbearably moving way. Their destiny links them to the fairy realm - a world within ours, yet much larger - manipulated by 'them' in typically amoral and callous ways, yet retaining free will, loving and sorrowing and bringing up kids like anyone else, but with magic oddly intersecting with their lives.
Crowley writes such beautiful prose. His writing reaches in and grabs your soul. He is never sentimental, because always truthful. He knows his magic, and lightly slips it over us like a net. And he writes so powerfully about love and longing. 'Little, Big' has at its heart a gripping and devastating love story.
I've read this book many times, and never get tired of it. It's rich and full of wonders. 'The further in you go, the bigger it gets'. One of those books that will change your life.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A book for the literate and scholarly
This book reminds me a bit of "A midsummer night tale".
This story is about a character called Smoky Barnable, a bit of an outcast, who marries a beautiful woman who... Read more
This story is about a character called Smoky Barnable, a bit of an outcast, who marries a beautiful woman who... Read more
Published 6 months ago by RAMON
A magical fable of love in the hidden realms of fairie!
This book stands out in its conceptual uniqueness. It reads a bit like a classical novel, if Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell was a love story it might turn out like this. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2010 by Rohan White
Enchanting in the true sense of the word
I re-read this book every few years, and it never fails to weave its magic. It is one of those rare books which utterly enfolds you, and takes you gently but inexorably into... Read more
Published on 24 April 2008 by Mr. N. K. Reiter
Wow.
This is one of my favourite books. It's one of the best books i ever read.
The multi-generational tale of the Drinkwaters, a family protected, guided, manipulated and... Read more
The multi-generational tale of the Drinkwaters, a family protected, guided, manipulated and... Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2007 by Niall Mc Cann
time travel
Contains sort of teenie intellectual spoiler....
I'm kind of a junkie for time travel books - just call me the time traveller's mistress - and I love this book's picture... Read more
I'm kind of a junkie for time travel books - just call me the time traveller's mistress - and I love this book's picture... Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2006 by cinnamonbrandy@
One of those rare books
Crowley spins a wonderful yarn, based on many popular myths and legends but taking an altogether fresh look at them, incorporating them wonderfully into his Tale. Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2004 by Oren Douek
Yawn
Overwritten, dull, aggravating. Don't waste your time.
Published on 10 Jun 2004
Extremely interesting novel, wondeful use of language.
...This is a magnificent piece of writing where a long drawn out tale is kept together soley by the strength of the writer's prose. It draws on a whole range of myths and legends. Read more
Published on 26 Aug 2001
a delightful, subtle fantasy
All of us feel we are more or less outsiders when we enter a fantasy world. Smokey, the protagonist in "Little Big", is profoundly an outsider when he gets involved with... Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2000 by Reid Byers
petulant, peevish, pretentious
Not really a novel, more a theological exploration. Each episode enacted by the characters constitutes very little action, and really only serves as a sort of fable on which to... Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2000 by S. Clark
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