Rating: 
Summary: Overwritten prose, underdeveloped characters
Review: Almost no book can live up to its hype, and McCracken's is no exception. Had I read her novel before I'd heard it so highly touted, I might have enjoyed it a little more...but maybe only a little. I do not agree with the many reviewers who praise her writing style; the book is almost absurdly overwritten in a great many places: "I loved him because I wanted to save him, and because I could not. I loved him because I wanted to be enough for him, and I was not." Admittedly, there were some wonderful lines as well, but just not enough to make up for the those that sound straight out of "Bridges of Madison County."I also agree with the reviewers who noted that the book spends far too much time on Peggy and not nearly enough on James (or really any of the other characters). Everyone but Peggy came across as somewhat "flat." At many points in the story I started to wonder if Peggy wasn't meant to be an "unreliable narrator" -- that is, that we were supposed to see her love for James as truly unbalanced in a way that she herself can't see. James is intriguing but just not fleshed out enough as a character for me to see why Peggy should be so obsessed with him. I really wanted to like Peggy -- it's so seldom that quiet, bookish characters get to be the center of novels -- but most of the time I did not, not because any of her "faults" (such as her straightforward declaration that she is not a lover of mankind), but, ironically, because I felt that McCracken tried too hard to make us like Peggy and to force us to see Peggy's point of view as a justified one.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful read - highly recommended.
Review: As a librarian myself, I was intrigued by this book as soon as I heard about it. I truly enjoyed it, from both a reader's and a librarian's point of view. It's well-written, with wonderfully dry humor and a poignant sadness at the same time. McCracken has an ability to create characters and scenes quickly with few words, yet conveys a complete sense of place - the reader has a clear picture of the town and the people that live there (as well as the tourists that visit!). James, the giant, is a compelling boy/man and I found myself rooting for him along with Peggy and his friends.As a librarian, I found it even more fulfilling, since McCracken paints a clear picture of Peggy's career with all of those details that we librarians are so familiar with and have in common. The frustration and satisfaction that we deal with in our jobs every day, nearly simultaneously, comes through loud and clear (and can only come from an author with personal experience). If you're looking for a book that will make you laugh out loud one minute and suppress tears the next, this is the one. I highly recommend this book for all readers, but especially for librarians, present and former
Rating: 
Summary: A most unusual romance
Review: Elizabeth McCracken's 1996 novel The Giant's House recalls a most unusual romance. Peggy Cort is the librarian in a small Cape Cod village. James Carlson is an "over-tall" eleven year old boy who becomes a patron of the library, then later Cort's closest companion. Carlson is, literally, a "freak" of nature. As he grows to his late teens, he becomes over eight feet tall. He is also quite frail, and destined to live a short life. The "romance" between Cort and Carlson both is and is not platonic. Peggy's daughter both is and is not James' posthumous son. This is a very moving work, and says much about small town life and prejudices, friendships, and love -- whatever that is. It is a very quiet book, and perhaps quietness -- or repression -- is a main theme. McCracken writes beautifully, and both her plot and characters (including the impossibly tall James) ring true and clear.
Rating:
Summary: This is simply a Very Good Book
Review: I read some of the other reviews of this book, and I'm not sure what people were expecting. This is a very good story, with interesting characters facing unusual dilemmas. If you enjoy a good story, this is a perfect book for you. It's not Jane Austen, but then so little IS Jane Austen :-) Really only Jane is Jane. Will this book be remembered in 100 years? Probably not- but it's still a darn good read. I shared it with all my friends, who are inveterate readers, just like me, and we all loved it. It's probably a "chick" book; so don't go making your husband read it.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The whole premise is very creative - a 1950s relationship between a librarian and a student, 13 years her junior. People just don't write about stuff like that. :-) In the end, you realize how much the librarian changed, but didn't change at the same time. One bright light shown in her life for the decade, and her life was forever altered, but then she went back to being the same ole recluse she was before the giant came into her life. I wish things had turned out differently for our romantic pair, but...
Rating:
Summary: Quirky, intelligent, romantic. Please read this book.
Review: McCracken is one of Granta's 20 best young American novelists,and she deserves the distinction. Her first novel is a romanticlook into the heart of Peggy Cort, a New England librarian, who falls in love with the world's tallest boy. It's bitingly sarcastic when it needs to be, and an odd, almost old-fashioned romance througout. McCracken proved herself a brilliant writer in her short story collection Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry, but here she proves to us that exploring the nature of longing and the hidden spaces of the human heart can be as funny, as sexy, and as adventurous as anything we'll ever see at the movies. You must read this novel--it will change your heart.
Rating:
Summary: The Giant's House
Review: On a whim I picked up this title to read this morning. I'm sorry to say that I haven't put it down since. I've ignored dinner. My son eats grapes for dinner and I've ignored my husband all day. Such is the evidence of a good read. Even the second read, I react the same as I did the first: Forget everything and read wherever I can place the book to snatch text to memory and pleasure. McCracken is hugely talented, a poet, a philosopher, and a secret eye to see what 99 percent of the population never considers.
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Summary: A Big Heartache of a Tale
Review: The Giant's House, a Romance by Elizabeth McCracken This tale documents the world's first posthumous marriage between the world's largest man, eight foot seven inches, four hundred and fifteen pounds at death, and the oddest librarian. Set in 1950's Cape Cod, this book immediate hooks with the opening lines: "I do not love mankind. People think they're interesting. That's their first mistake". This book is so peculiar, it easily takes flight. It would seem that selecting a topic so strange would be a hopeless endeavor. However, add humanity and the hope in one's ability to find a place and love in the world; Add Ms. McCracken's ability to write AND to tell a tale, and you have an intriguing romance. The tale clips along at a rapid pace, through Peggy, the librarian's on-going internal dialogue. Peggy conducts a life teeming with the library sciences, interaction with her patrons and small town people and a blossoming family life with the various members of James' family. She possesses a profound ineptitude for love. Then, she falls in love with James, a younger but much bigger man. Besides a great size difference, there is the great age difference between Peggy and James, delicately and obtusely described by Peggy " There's a joke about that. A forty-year-old man (it's always a man) falls in love with a ten-year-old girl. He's four times her age. He waits five years; now he's forty-five and she's fifteen and he's ony three times her age. Fifteen years later he's sixty, only double her age. How long until she catches up completely? I love that joke." This is mixed in with very oddly timed character appearances and disappearances, such as the suicide from overdose of James' mother, the appearance of James' father after James dies, and a one night stand in which Peggy becomes pregnant. The time frames are vague, with mention of various dates, primarily in relationship to the age of the characters throughout the book. However the characters are clear and quirky, and carry the plot weaknesses and time lapses forward. You, the reader, get to do the math. Other notable characters include another librarian, Astoria Peck. She "handled most of the library's technical processes-repairing books or sending them out to a bindery, if they could be saved at all; cataloguing; billing. Like me, she was a librarian (that is, she had a master's in library science) and had for many years worked at the elementary school. Once she hit forty, she said, she got tired of the smell of children `They smell like bad cookies, " she told me. "Go ahead, get a good whiff.'" Jame's aunt is another interesting figure, not that much older than Peggy: "His aunt answered for him from across the room, closing the door behind her. "he's been fine, " she said. Her voice gave me a start, but a weird pleasure, too-it was a deep sticky voice, the kind a woman generally gets through sin of some sort". The Giant's House is a romance of a strange, bittersweet nature. This painful tale of love lost/love found; a heartache of a tale told by a librarian of all people.
Rating:
Summary: The Giant's House
Review: What a refreshing change of pace! McCracken's creative, but not overworked, imagery is really makes this novel. I look forward to reading from her.
Rating: 
Summary: Plot holds unrealized promise
Review: What a super story. McCracken delivers such beautiful prose in this novel, I actually had to reread some chapters as I finished them. These are words worth savoring, delightfully delivered through metaphors. Giant is a story of TRUE romance. Hang up those Harlequins and read a story that will touch your soul and make you a believer in real love and emotion. McCracken has taken two characters and thrown in a bundle of troublesome issues to make the reltionship doomed (the boy's size, their difference in age, etc) yet moves the characters closer together and shows that the bonds of love can cross any boundaries. Buy this one and keep it. You'll want to read it again. Trust me.
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