Rating: 
Summary: The luminous & numinous perfected in a grand millenial tale.
Review: Because of several mediocre earlier works, author John Crowley was unfortunately typecast as a sci-fi/fantasy fiction writer. Little, Big is however a novel in the truest sense of the word, and established Crowley as one of the better wordsmiths of our time. This is a story to be savored; the delicious phrasings turn in upon themselves with hallucinatory effect, leading the entranced reader into a world just next door ("the further in you go, the bigger it gets") which holds humanity's only promise for salvation from the dreary, deadly eco-mess we've fashioned for ourselves. The characters in Little, Big are lovable, quirky, and unforgettable, but the book's real power lies in its author's ability to evoke a timeless place in a placeless time through amazing use of language. This book must be read to be seen, and then the reader cannot help but believe. The original Bantam edition's cover art is a keeper-- it captures so well the ephemeral luminosity of the Tale told-- but do not hesitate to devour any copy you can get your hands on. Crowley himself acknowledges, in the preface to a later edition, that this story may well prove to be his pinnacle as an artist of the written word... and he is comfortable with that notion. It is easy to understand his willingness to rest his literary reputation on this piece of work. An underground, largely-undiscovered classic, I predict that Little, Big will someday attain its rightful place in great literature of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: Huge & Gorgeous (& a bit too long)
Review: The anonymous young Smoky Barnable leaves the City to marry into a very strange family occupying the very strange manor at Edgewood, where a war, or a merging of worlds, or something like it, may or may not be happening.Little, Big is a huge, gorgeous piece of work populated with some of the most endearing characters and touching episodes I've read in a long while. Each of Crowley's characters is affected - sometimes quietly, but always deeply - by the mysterious Something happening at Edgewood. There is a definite force at work, but whether it's good, evil, or indifferent is all part of the mystery. Crowley does have a tendency to be verbose; with a bit of snipping the book could have been 100 pages more to the point. Though the ending wasn't as illuminating as I would have liked, the tale itself was highly satisfying, with many smaller beginnings and endings along the way, and enough triumph and sorrow for all four generations of Edgewood. I didn't think of it until just now, but Little, Big is similar to Mervyn Peak's Titus Groan. Think of Edgewood as a contemporary Gormenghast driven by otherworldly forces rather than ancient tradition.
Rating:
Summary: Little Big is a big hit!!!
Review: I really thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was totally lost in the whole story. The fairies, the talking fish, the many-sided house....
I am not a big fantasy book fan, but when I read this book I was fascinated. Just the thought of all that was happening and all the pictures in my head....I was lost in Crowley's world from page 1. My dad gave me this book to read and I loved it so much that he ended up giving it to me. I will treasure this book always and forever.
I recommend this book to all fantasy fans. This is a must read book. May you read it and get lost as I did!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely my favorite book of all time.
Review: One of those books you can read again and again, finding new things with each reading. An epic sort of work, that explores several generations of a family whose lives are closely entwined with the mythic world of faerie. However, it does not move sequentially through these generations, but jumps about and flashes back giving you the pieces of a puzzle you must put together. The story has a circular and cyclical quality that gives it a "never ending" appeal. The characters are genuine and likable, and the setting is both contemporary and timeless in quality. We begin the story with Smoky Barnable, an ordinary sort of man, he has left the City and given up his job editing the Telephone book. He is walking down a country lane on the way to be married. Walking there, by the way, was one of the stipulations of the wedding. His bride-to-be is Daily Alice, whose family lives at Edgewood, a house that sits on "the edge" of the world and was built by Alice's grandfather. Alice's Aunt Cloud is sitting on the front porch following Smoky's progress with her tarot cards, while Alice's father is in his study writing children's stories about the mouse-famliy that lives in the garden wall. Smoky met Alice through Frank Mouse, Smoky's co-worker and Alice's cousin. Frank, who's illegitimate child with Alice's sister Sophie was stollen by faeries and replaced with a changeling, is commonly known as the City Mouse. OK, I think you get the idea...
Rating: 
Summary: Well-written but over-rated masterpiece
Review: Well, yes, this is a good book. It's been hailed as a literary masterpiece and it probably is. However, the book has no plot. There is no real sense of "conflict" that drives the characters. There is no real "resolution" to what passes for plot in LITTLE, BIG. No real character growth or epiphanies in the end. What is exceptional about this book is, as everyone has pointed out, the stellar quality of the actual writing. Its almost a 700 page lyrical poem. Because it has no plot, you can open the book anywhere and start reading, set it aside, open it up tomorrow at a different place and it won't make any difference to your comprehension of the story. No one chapter is contingent on the chapter that precedes it. No one chapter ever really resolves anything. Also its fantasy elements are very few and far between. Only Crowley's prose style keeps the fantasy element alive just by the lyrical nature of the writing itself. You _know_ you're in a fantasy world; but much of the time nothing ever really happens and very little of the novel stays with you after you're done. Yet, this is a book to be recommended, if only as a sui generis type of literary fantasy. I think Crowley wanted to write something like Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, but overshot the goal in LITTLE, BIG. (He certainly can't match Garcia Marquez's gift for the fantastic.) I can't tell you how often I wanted the book just to end . . . and how many times it could have ended at any one place but didn't. Honestly I can't say that I enjoyed this book. But I was impressed by it.
Rating: 
Summary: with all due respect...
Review: ...to Crowley and his fans (both in general) ((I am one)) (and fans of LITTLE, BIG in particular)--I have to confess I found LITTLE, BIG a grave disappointment, both in comparison with Crowley's other novels and in comparison with the masterworks on which Crowley has modeled his tale. The two most obvious influences--both cued in the text--are Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald. But LITTLE, BIG lacks the brevity, surrealism (by turns delightful and threatening), and wit that characterize the best of both these men's work. As the pages kept turning, I longed for some of that wit, or for the sort of sudden, shockingly vivid passages (MacDonald's forte) that would transcend the stifling Victoriana of Edgewood. Rather than MacDonald's COLLECTED FAIRY TALES, or even PHANTASTES OR LILITH--much less Carroll's farces--LITTLE, BIG compares more obviously to MacDonald's long and turgid Scottish novels. Granted, the final movements of the book are much more satisfying (in terms of both plot and lyric invention) than the early going. But the early going lasts a long, long time. What Crowley does best in LITTLE, BIG--and it is not an inconsiderable achievement--is paint a picture of a "magical" world in which magic in fact rarely happens; in which, as he says at one memorable point, we sit enthralled in our daily lives, waiting for the curtain to go up and the real show to begin. This is a longing that all of us feel--the longing that most sci-fi/fantasy authors (Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman leap instantly to mind) cater to. LITTLE, BIG's strength is that Crowley is not quite ready to afford easy answers. The curtain trembles; it shimmers. We wait. And wait. It never entirely rises. Waiting (often in vain) is part and parcel of this world's magic, Crowley seems to be saying. So be it. But this world's own peculiar pleasures can be good enough, in the absence of Faerie. The dull, plodding prose that dominates much of LITTLE, BIG gives lie to both worlds. Crowley has written much better, elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: I just don't get it
Review: I picked this book up based upon all the raves. Crowley was linked with Mieville and Neil Gaiman, whom I both love. So I was set to really get into Little, Big. But I just don't get this book at all. Found it trite, cute, and painfully whimsical. Even the writing was wooden. There seems to be a Rorschach quality to all these raves - as if the reader is seeing what they want to be in the book, rather than what is actually there.
Rating:
Summary: American Fantasy
Review: Smokey Barnable is an unremarkable man. He has nothing that distinguishes him in life and often goes unnoticed. Finally, George Mouse, introduces him to Alice Drinkwater, or Daily Alice, who will become Smokey's wife. Daily Alice is nothing if not remarkable and Smokey, in marrying her, is drawn not only into her remarakble world but also the world of her relatives and ancestors. About a century ago, Alice's great grandmother, Violet Bramble, made a pact with "Them" (variously called Elementals and Fairies). This pact affected the lives of all who live in and around Edgewood and the isolated upstate New York home this multigenerational family lives in. Most of them consider whatever happens to be a part of the Tale but what this Tale actually consists of many don't have a clue although a few characters are able to gleen minor clues from a magical tarot deck. Through the course of the first half of the book, we follow not only the relationship of Smokey and Daily Alice but also learn the history of her family. This part is permeated with hints of the mystery of what Edgewood actually is and what exists beyond common knowledge. Then, some might say abruptly, Smokey and Alice become secondary characters as the Tale follows their son, Auberon, as he leaves Edgewood to seek his life in the City. This is a subtle work constructed by Crowley to reflect the world in which the characters live. Like Smokey and the rest, rarely are we treated to the realm of the faeries. Smokey himself is skeptical of their existence. They will be seen only by those they wish to be seen by and we will only know as much as they allow us to know. Filled with archetypal (the Fool, the Knight-Errant, the Wizard, the Sleeping King) yet entertaining characters, "Little, Big" is a must-read as an influential work of the latter 20th century, one of the earlier fantasies which established a solid American fantasy literature in the veign of the urban fantasies to follow.
Rating:
Summary: A luxurious read
Review: I wish I could give this 4.5 stars, because it's not really a 4 star, but I can't really give it a 5 because some readers "might" get bogged down in the earlier parts and give up reading.... it would be a shame to do so, but there you have it. This is a slow read-- but I don't mean that in a negative way. It's more like savoring something that tastes really good-- you don't want to gobble it all down right away, and it's really so rich that if you did consume it too fast, you'd regret it afterwards. The book is not at all a fast-paced action book. Hollywood would certainly never make a movie out of it, for example. But you grow to love the characters, and there is a long time for you to come to know them well. The tone is mythic-- at times it feels like you're reading a book written in the 1900's, but it is also truly modern. Once you get to the end and find out the circular nature of the story, and the way it blends its "ordinary people" characters into fantasy and faerie, you'll be amazed at the power of a "slow" novel to really dig deeply into your memory. There is a tendency for some folks to think "fantasy" is only the stuff read by teens & is not "literary." The fantasy epic, however, goes as far back as Spencer's Faerie Queen-- which this novel, in some ways, owes a debt to. It's truly worthy of being classed in the "canon" of great literature-- but I don't think it will be-- like one of its main characters, the novel is strangely anonymous among readers who OUGHT to know about it. Fans of fantasy as a genre ought to read this book, but then, so should classics fans and literary novel fans. Read this book, and see the way myth and history blend together.
Rating:
Summary: In the Occult'd Eye of a Vanished Statue
Review: This catlike prodigy of a novel deserves our special reverence. Or at least a moment to reflect on its strange whirrings and moon-flecked archways and virtuosic sureness of touch. Its many-chambered Daedalian artifice, its humanly real traceries of love and wonder and dread, its wonderful doubling of urban anomie and bawdishness (in the middle chapters) with the privileged sepia air of Faerie (in the opening and closing movements, clapping the median like tooled oaken bookends). This is a story that breaks our tunnelvision, that stills audiences, that prays and conjures, and I'd like to take a moment to try and explain why. First off, Crowley is an adamantine stylist, a Van Eyckian miniaturist of the painted Word. Try comparing his meticulous, faceted convolutions with the more reckless imaginings of a trendy Goth-boy like China Mieville (whose armipotent imagination stumbles on the crutch of one too many lame attempts at "dark poetry"). Crowley's prose is of another dimension altogether, twitting us awake from our bone-weary diurnal stupor, jizzing our sinuses like a nostalgic waft of leaf mold on the brisk air of a blue country dusk, the reader's syntactic eye both soothed and bedazzled by the adjusting tones of his deep marbled voice, the dark firelight of an ancient-modern storyteller working at the very peak of his powers. Detractors of Crowley's novel (and they are graciously few) like to characterize *Little, Big* as a hackneyed New England fantasia of ye olde Nymphic Reverie, with its (at times) irksome profusion of Victorian music-boxes and china statuettes, mossy pillars and autumnal smoke, emerald glades and overgrown hedge mazes, octagonal stained-glass and sprawling architectural follies, musty libraries and caved-in armchairs, chestnut-flavored pipe-smoke and sepia daguerrotypes, corroded wicket-gates creaking in the dusk, Purcell arias and spineshanked volumes of Seneca and Lucretius, derelict greenhouses and rusted rooftop orreries locked onto ancient sidereal trajectories, oval portraiture and ethereal night-galleries of sandmen and gargoyles, enfountain'd statuary and fairy gold, country-house victuals and New England weathercocks, little stone bridges over burbling nighttime brooks, cone-hatted gnomic intruders and cross-dimensional bogeymen, talking mice and elemental Deities, nautilus-shells in wet earth, staghorn and faun's feet in brambly ditches, feuding warlocks' covens, Theosophic discussion-circles and Byzantine dynastic reincarnations, spellcraft and espionage, and the "thinning" of elven glades and will o' wisping groves into the cold greasy ash-pits of urban-industrial grunge.... Why, a full-blown Midsummer Night's Recycling Bin, or so it would appear. But my snippy little laundry-list is (as Crowleyites know) an evil, unfair, blurbifying vulgarization, and I apologize for it. *Little, Big* far transcends the winter-solstice tinsel and candlelight of its quaint fairyland trappings, with strong characters, even stronger writing (one fully fleshed out *mise en scene* after another), and more thorny "reality" than the average Tolkien schlub would like to contend with. It is Our World, in effect, but Elsewhere.... Crowley's novel puts our eye to the chink of Faerie, even as those tense, fleeting magicks wax and wane unto the shadow-lengthening City, with its dog-eat-dog lockjaw of ecstasy and ennui. While I loathe to use a word like "magical" (yuck), this author *does* tap into something passing strange, "romantic" in the risky, hairy, Shelleyan sense -- an occult'd eye lodged in the key-stone arch of some many-statue'd gothic park, whipping up ghosts that can never be laid. Late in the story, Crowley has his eldritch ne'er-do-well Ariel Hawksquill wax theosophical on the nature of the Artificer, the web-spinning world-storyteller who spellbinds random events into pregnant human narrative. "The mage is by definition he who manipulates and rules those forces at whose direction the common run blindly live"(413). Throughout *Little, Big*, ambitious Renaissance scope interweaves with a mushy, tender sequence of Chekhovian exhibits that limn the wiles and wherefores of some truly wacky personae, characterizations as subtle, winsome, prickly, and heartfelt as an effeminate Oberon populating a dollhouse with pixie-ish companions unceremoniously dumped into the 20th century, strung up between the nipping elfland music of the pathless glen and the air-conditioned nightmares of industrial modernity. What I think astounds me most about Crowley's book is that you could very well remove all the supernaturally outrageous scenes and dramatic wheel-greasers and the novel would still work as a deeply affecting, deeply entrancing vision of human relationships. (Apart from some talking birds and fish, a fire-eating demon cherub, a winsome little pixie-child, and Hawksquill's precocious stealth-voodoo, most of the supernatural elements are limned and counter-limned in an autumnal reverie of ever-circling mystery and conjecture.) The fantasy elements are, it seems, merely the baroque curlicues cresting off the deep, inward-spiraling armature of Crowley's tender, funny, mystifying, knick-knacking treatise on the tangled threads of human narcissism (and their crisscrossing funnel-web dramas). Sure, the book bogs down in places, but those who criticize it for lack of "plot" have a very limited conception of the manifold plots that squeak and whir in the microcosm of our LittleBig puzzlebox'd existence. This is Crowley's privileged terrain, after all, syrupy and wistful, subversive and even a little wild, offering us all a slow, purling, gumptious, invigorating read.
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