#11 John Crowley: Little, Big

[bellinghman]

John Crowley: Little, Big

Paperback: 538 pages
Publisher: Orion Pub Co (May 18, 2000)
ISBN: 185798711X
Category(ies): Fantasy

This is published as the 5th in the Fantasy Masterworks series, so it should be good.

This is very much an American fantasy. There's a huge house out in the country (built in a number of different styles as an architect's catalogue made concrete), and there is a city not too far away that is either New York, or that at least contains New York Grand Central Station, with its back-to-front zodiacal ceiling. It takes place mostly in the 20th Century, but as a family saga with roots starting back in the 19th, and running over into the early 21st.

And yet, and yet. There are tinges of magic. Small, almost unobservable at first, but they slowly grow and take over. One character at least is transformed into something far from human, but we meet him first after the transformation, and the connection with the human we meet later (but chronologically earlier) is not initially obvious. And we see the two sides of a family of whom some, the ones with monobrows, have an ability to see the fair folk, while the ones without, do not.

This book was originally published 25 years ago. I'm not the only one to feel that it deserved the republication. Delightful, and worthy of the Fantasy Masterwork accolade.