Little, Big

Fantasy Masterworks Volume 5 Review ''A book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.'' --Ursula K. Le Guin ''Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust.'' --Peter Straub, award-winning horror fiction author Ambitious, dazzling, strangely moving, a marvelous magic-realist family chronicle.'' -- Washington Post ''John Crowley writes sentences of such coruscating magnificence that the rest of the English language has fallen in love with them. I once knew an adverbial clause who was so infatuated with the linguistic beauty of Little, Big that the poor creature pined away into a comma.'' --James Morrow, World Fantasy Award-winning author ''One of my favorite works of modern fantasy, Little, Big , is an amazing tale told in an amazing way. Reading it I felt as if I were watching a high-wire artist: one slip and he would fall into the dreadful net of Twee. Yet Crowley never slips, not upon a single word, and the book grows more powerful with every page.'' --Katharine Kerr, bestselling author Product Description John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder. Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end. Once upon a time there was a most peculiar house. Edgewood, a charming old manse of unexpected rooms and illusory angles, sat on the border between reality and fantasy--a place where mortals could mingle with faeries Winner of the 1982 World Fantasy Award for best novel.