Crowley,
Little, Big

I don't know what this book is about. I've only read it once, and was so fascinated by the texture and intricacy of the writing that I paid little attention to the large-scale structure. Crowley's writing is generally excellent (maybe less so in his earliest work), but here it's also flamboyant, both at the sort of microstylistic level and in its inclusion of all sorts of tangentially relevant clevernesses. (I also like early Zelazny.) At the same time, he writes subtle fantasy; the book's world is quite near our own, though decidedly skewed.

To inject a little useful data: the book covers, oh, a hundred years of one family's history, skipping around in time. They have past contact with fairies, and a future rendezvous; the line between the two is almost a character itself. It's not clear to me that all of the subplots and episodes are firmly attached -- the Barbarossa thread in particular, and also (more worrisomely) the whole Lily business -- but as I said, I was mostly staring at the ground. And even if it is a short-story anthology, they're damned fine short stories.

I'm dissatisfied with the ending, I think. So, my satisfaction is not necessarily the ending's goal -- but I get the impression that the author is more satisfied than I am. This vaguely bothers me.

This book is apparently out of print in hardcover. If you know of a copy, please drop me a line.

eub 1/97


(go to my front-door page) eli+w3@cs.cmu.edu
19 Jan 2002