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Summary: Anyone who is searching for Something ..Somewhere else....
Review: will find a glimpse of it in Crowley's masterpiece "Little, Big". This is truly the most compelling fantasy - or any other type of novel that I have ever read. The initial compulsion is to escape image-by-image into delicious, almost-hypnotic waking/dreaming states that linger far and away well after one has become involved in the intricately woven layers of this tale. The second compulsion is to include those most loved and trusted friends in sharing this beautifully evocative text. Finally, one is compelled to search for another copy of "Little, Big" when the original has become lost in it's travels - the finding is no small feat, but Somehow as necessary as capturing a wondrous dream that was interrupted by waking.
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Summary: you never want it to end
Review: This is the kind of book that you want everyone you care about to read. And that's how I lost my copy of this beautiful work. I hope it's still being passed along. It's one of those books that creeps up on you and before you know it you're getting close to the end and experiencing that delicious combination - anticipation of the conclusion mixed with the grief of parting with the magical world you've been immersed in. It's mystifyingly out of print. I live in the hope that I'll have a chance encounter with someone who wants me to read it...
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Summary: The Greatest American Fantasy Novel ever
Review: I'm so glad this book is out of print. It should forever remain a delicious secret, to be passed between friends in dogeared, much-read old editions. Pray that Hollywood never discovers it. I've read it three times, the last time aloud to my wife, who had never encountered it before. In a world glutted to the gills with crappy fantasy books and "Faerie" nonsense, Little, Big is one of the few novels to get it right. Crowley transforms the mundane American landscape into a place of magic and wonder -- the only writer to really do so successfully (sorry, Stephen King). If you can find a copy, then you have earned the pleasure of reading Little, Big.
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Summary: The best book I have ever read.
Review: This review will be fairly short and to the point, I hope. As I am sure others who have read this book and love it like a dear friend will understand, there is not enough space here to even begin to explain the power and beauty of this wonderful novel. It is so much more than a novel. It is a world. It is alive! This book will touch you deeply. If it does not, well then I, for one, am not sure what will. In the opinion of this reviewer, this is without a doubt one of the greatest, and quite possibly, THE greatest book ever written. It took me seven years to finish. After getting about half way through, I would deliberately loose the book, so as not to finish too quickly. When I finally turned the last page, I cried. I cried because Little, Big was the most beautiful thing I had ever read, and because I knew re-reading would never be like the first time. I have, however, re-read the book many times since then. Crowley's master-work is one of the very few books I can be bothered to read again and again. It is a new, wonderful experience every time. I will take this book into the next world with me. The little, crumpled, dog-eared, tea-stained paperback edition I came accross all those years ago is still with me, and will be with me always. Read this book- change forever the way you live life, and make a new best friend.
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Summary: It gets better every time you read it.
Review: By the time a friend lost my first copy of Little, Big it had gone out of print. I spent the next several years annoying my friends and family with my efforts to locate another copy. Eventually, another friend managed to find one for me. A year later, when the book was back in print, she gave me another copy, this one to lend out. This is a good system, although if you love this book as much as I do, you will simply want to buy copies for all your loved ones (at least the ones who read books). The story of an (somewhat) ordinary man who marries into an extraordinary family, Little, Big is such an incredibly allusive work that every year when I go back to it I find new things to understand. And until I finish the complete works of Lewis Carroll, not to mention Shakespeare and god only knows what else, I can never truly finish this book. It is a rare book that can keep surprising you after ten years' worth of re-reading, but Little, Big manages to do just that, like a comfortingly familiar old friend who shows up every year or so with some delightful and surprising little gifts for you. It is beautifully, delicately written, and wholly captivating. You'll read it and wish you too could live at Edgewood with Smoky, Daily Alice and the rest of the Drinkwater family. Read this book. And prepare to spend the rest of your life with it...happily ever after.
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Summary: Good, but lacking Something...
Review: The praise of friends surrounding Little, Big has been so lavish and frequent that when I came across a book club edition, I bought it immediately. I just finished it this evening. If this book is any indication, John Crowley is indeed an excellent and much undervalued writer. However, I couldn't help going away from this book with a feeling that a certain indefinable Something (a phrase dear to Crowley's heart) was lacking. Perhaps it was the letdown of a story that, while making frequent reference to magic and magical beings, ultimately fails to evoke a true sense of wonder in the reader (or, at any rate, in this reader).
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Summary: That this book is out of print is astonishing
Review: I have already owned and lost two copies of this book and am currently devoting too much time to finding a third. I love it. It broke my heart.
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Summary: My favorite novel. Unique, rapturous, funny, challenging.
Review: There's really nothing like LITTLE,BIG. I've read all the rest of Crowley, too, and highly recommend AEGYPT and its sequel LOVE AND SLEEP (and am anxiously awaiting a third in what I suspect will turn out to be a trilogy), but LITTLE,BIG is a magnum opus for anyone. Yes, it's one of those I re-read nearly every year. It replaced the "favorite novel" I had held in that position for 27 years (THE LAST OF THE JUST, by Andres Schwarz-Bart), so you can tell I'm a loyalist -- nothing casual or cavalier about this review.
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Summary: An achingly beautiful moebius strip of a fantasy novel
Review: I've read a lot of books in my life, and nothing I have ever read has affected me nearly as much as Little, Big. It was like reading a biography of all the things that had ever truly mattered to me. As I read it, I found myself crying at times because John Crowley had touched some intimate, secret part of me that I had never realized anyone else felt or believed. It's a modern fairy tale that so skillfully mixes fantasy and reality that you're never sure which is which, (just like real life). As you are swept along by the wonderful storyline, you are astonished when, like a moebius strip, it turns and meets itself going the other way; and like the mailmen delivering Smokey and Alice's letters that cross in the mail, you wave to yourself as you sail past. The discriptions of things are achingly detailed, so that the experience of reading it is truly like watching a movie, (or pehaps a dream). If this book affects you half as much as it did me, you're in for a ride.
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Summary: Beautiful Writing but S-L-O-O-O-O-O-O-W-W-W...
Review: Maybe I'm not as patient as I used to be - but I've read Proust and liked it! Crowley's stories tend to be wandering walkabouts through worlds of words, with eccentric characters pursuing the possibilities inherent in a variety of intriguing conceits... but plot - hey, who needs it? I guess _I_ do! I find John Irving does a more coherent job of these dense, multi-character tomes. It was a SERIOUS effort to finish this book. There are some interesting ideas and Crowley is a poet of prose, but the eccentric-character bit only takes you so far. I'd strongly recommend his short story, Engine_Summer. Save Little,_Big for one of those times you're stuck on a desert island with nothing else to read.
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