The Giant's House [Paperback]

The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod 28 year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt - the 'over-tall' 11 year-old boy who's the talk of the town - walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows - six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight - so does her heart and their most singular romance. THE GIANT'S HOUSE is a strange, beautifully written and unforgettably tender novel about learning to welcome the unexpected miracle.

'The most original and enchanting romance I have read in a long time' Erica Wagner, The Times

'The story is told in the cool precise voice of spinster librarian Peggy Cort, whose life is transformed the day that an exceptionally tall 11-year-old walks into the library. As the years pass and he grows to over eight feet, Peggy invests her life, love and energy in this sad boy who faces life as a freak. McCracken avoids the temptations of easy humour and writes with great pathos and delicacy about the complexities of love' Observer

'The lucid, compelling prose convinces us that this mismatched pair do become a real couple: improbably, disturbingly, and very movingly, theirs is a true love story' Sunday Times

'The Giant's House is the work of a writer who is as singular and astute as the characters she creates... funny, ambitious and precise... a beautifully composed portrait of people struggling against themselves with the full force of their courage and desire' Times Literary Supplement

Every so often a novel comes along which transcends whimsy with the beauty of its writing. Elizabeth McCracken's small masterpiece is one of these' G2

Elizabeth McCracken was born in Boston in 1966. Since the age of 15 she has been a librarian first at the Newton (Mass.) Free Library, then the University of Pennsylvania humanities and social science library. She was the Circulation Desk Chief at the Somerville (Mass.) Public Library until the fall of 1995. She has had fellowships from the University of Iowa; the Michener Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Somerville Arts Council; and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was twice a fellow. Her work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michener Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also honoured as one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40.