Little, Big
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''Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament'' is a
contemporary fantasy Contemporary fantasy is a genre, subgenre of fantasy set in the present day. It is perhaps most popular for its subgenres, occult detective fiction, urban fantasy, low fantasy, supernatural fiction and paranormal fiction. Several authors note that ...
novel by John Crowley, published in 1981. It won the
World Fantasy Award The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year at the eponymous ann ...
in 1982.


Plot

Turn-of-the-century American architect John Drinkwater begins to suspect that within this world there lies another (and within that, another and another ad infinitum, each larger than the world that contains it). Towards the center is the realm of the
fairies A fairy (also called fay, fae, fae folk, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, generally described as anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic, found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Cel ...
, which his wife, the Englishwoman Violet Bramble, can see and talk with. Drinkwater gathers his thoughts into an ever-evolving book entitled ''The Architecture of Country Houses''. Drinkwater designs and builds a house called Edgewood north of
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. It is a composite of many styles, each built over and across the others, supposedly as a ″sampler″ for customers thinking about employing Drinkwater's firm. It has the effect of disorienting visitors and somehow protecting the family, and it proves to be a door leading to the outer realm of Faerie. At the beginning of the story, well after the deaths of Drinkwater and his wife, their great-granddaughter Daily Alice falls in love with and marries a stranger, ″Smoky″ Barnable, who she meets at the home of her City cousin George Mouse. Smoky gradually realizes that Alice and her sister Sophie claimed to have seen fairies when they were younger and that they and their family see their history as ″the Tale″. In a flashback, it is revealed that many of the residents of the area surrounding Edgewood are descended from John and Violet's son August, who struck a bargain with the fairies that granted him a power over women's hearts matched by their own power over his. Alice and Smoky have three daughters, Tacey, Lily and Lucy, and a son, Auberon. After an affair with Smoky, Sophie gives birth to a daughter, Lilac. She says Smoky is Lilac's father, but it is actually George Mouse. Lilac is stolen by the fairies and replaced with a changeling. Alice and Sophie's great-aunt Nora Cloud regularly consults an ancient set of
tarot Tarot (, first known as ''trionfi (cards), trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a set of playing cards used in tarot games and in fortune-telling or divination. From at least the mid-15th century, the tarot was used to play t ...
cards to find out about such mundane matters as the weather or how soon a visitor will be arriving at the house. Smoky's instructions for his journey to Edgewood to marry Alice were based on one of Nora's card readings. Sophie learns how to use them from Aunt Cloud. The story moves forward to Auberon as a young man venturing to ″the City″ (Manhattan), where he stays in George Mouse's gigantic ruinous compound of Old Law tenements, which Mouse has converted into a farmstead. The City is near collapse and rife with crime and poverty. Auberon falls in love with a striking and vivacious young Puerto Rican woman named Sylvie. They live together until Sylvie is lured away into Faerie. Inconsolable at her departure, Auberon takes to drink. At this juncture, Russell Eigenblick, a charismatic and secretive politician, rises in popularity and becomes the President of the United States. He advocates civil war, but against what or who is unclear. He is opposed by a covert group of wealthy businessmen and politicians called the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club. They are working with the mage Ariel Hawksquill, a distant relation of the Drinkwater family. Hawksquill divines that Eigenblick is the re-awakened
Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...
Frederick Barbarossa Frederick Barbarossa (December 1122 – 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick I (; ), was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190. He was elected King of Germany in Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 115 ...
and that he has been called from sleep to protect Faerie. Although he has not realized it, his enemy is humanity, which has unknowingly driven the fairies deeper and deeper into hiding. She announces this to the Club, but the members have decided to proceed without her. She becomes Eigenblick's adviser. Hawksquill meets Auberon and teaches him architecture-based techniques of the
art of memory The art of memory () is any of a number of loosely associated mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. An alternative term is "Ars Memorativa ...
. She recognizes that the cards he mentions are the pack that Eigenblick seeks, as they were made to foretell his return, and she induces him to tell her how to get to Edgewood. In return she gives him her key to a private park (designed by his great-great-grandfather), where he practices the art of memory on his time with Sylvie. He sinks further into alcoholism. After a drunken sexual encounter with Sylvie’s brother Bruno, which Auberon considers a degradation, he lives on the streets. Eventually Lilac appears to him and persuades him to begin a recovery. He moves back into George Mouse’s farm and becomes the writer for a
soap opera A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term ''soap opera'' originat ...
, taking much of his material from his grandfather ″Doc″ Drinkwater’s animal stories for children and his mother’s letters with stories of her extended family. Hawksquill goes to Edgewood, where she steals Sophie’s tarot cards, recognizing that they are somehow the map describing the route into Faerie. She returns to the City and tries to stop Eigenblick, but it is too late and Eigenblick has her killed. He then disappears and the country falls into a low-key civil war. The fairies, who can see the future but remember little of the past, understand the peril they are in but forget why, and they prepare to go deeper into the realms of Faerie; however, this cannot happen unless the extended family of the Drinkwaters comes to the mysterious ″Fairies’ Parliament″. Lilac visits Sophie and Daily Alice, and Auberon and George, summoning them to that event. Alice leaves first to find or create the way to Faerie. On Midsummer’s Day, the rest of the family assembles at Edgewood including Auberon and George. At the last minute, Smoky – who never really believed in Faerie – chooses not to go, instead devoting himself to finishing the repair of Edgewood′s old
orrery An orrery is a mechanical Solar System model, model of the Solar System that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and natural satellite, moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent ...
, which drew energy from the stars to power the home. He succeeds, and is persuaded by Sophie to accompany the family, but he dies of a heart attack before he leaves the borders of Edgewood. The remaining family members walk into the new realm and take the fairies’ place, Smoky’s funeral turns into Auberon and Sylvie’s wedding, and thus the Tale is finally completed. The book ends with a description of the empty Edgewood as it decays and returns to nature. The house becomes a legend, because it continues to have lights shining even though electricity is scarce in the rest of the country.


Characters

*Evan S. "Smoky" Barnable – One of the novel's protagonists, whose marriage to the Drinkwater family is prophesied long before it occurs. He succeeds the first Auberon (below) as a schoolteacher. *Alice Dale Drinkwater, known as Daily Alice – Smoky’s wife, Sophie’s sister and Auberon's mother. She is likewise assured of her destiny from a young age by Nora Cloud. *Auberon Barnable (the second Auberon) – Smoky’s son, and the second protagonist, who eventually leaves for the city to seek a destiny distinct from Edgewood and the interconnected Drinkwater clan. *Sylvie – A Stateside Puerto Rican worker at George Mouse’s farm. She was George’s lover but breaks up with him just as Auberon arrives. She can see the brownie who works at the farm and thinks of her as his queen. Her and her brother’s stories carry extended references to Lewis Carroll’s '' Sylvie and Bruno''. *Sophie Drinkwater – Alice’s sister. After Alice's departure, she leads the walk to Faerie. *Lilac (surname not used) – Sophie’s daughter, ostensibly by Smoky but actually by George Mouse. After being stolen by the fairies, she occasionally appears to Auberon, but no one else sees her till near the end of the story. *Violet Bramble – Ancestor of the Drinkwater clan. As a young unmarried woman in England, she is found to be pregnant by an unknown partner shortly after her father becomes active in the
Theosophical Society The Theosophical Society is the organizational body of Theosophy, an esoteric new religious movement. It was founded in New York City, U.S.A. in 1875. Among its founders were Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic and the principal thinker of the ...
. At one of their meetings she meets the first John Drinkwater. She later moves to America and marries him. Violet frequently goes to meet the fairies both from her father’s home in England and from Edgewood. She is the first to use the magical tarot cards to see the future. *John Drinkwater (the first John Drinkwater), architect and later author of ''The Architecture of Country Houses''. He is fascinated by what his wife tells him about the fairies she sees. *Doctor John Storm ″Doc″ Drinkwater (the second John Drinkwater) – August Drinkwater's son with Amy Meadows; Alice and Sophie's father. He can understand the speech of animals and writes children's books that are a fictional version of the stories of Thornton Burgess. *August Drinkwater – Violet Bramble′s son, who enters into a pact with fairies, giving him power to make women fall in love with him, in exchange for his theft of Violet Bramble′s cards, which he returns to the fairies. His power over each girl he seduces is based on his love for her, which drives him to desperation, and he attempts to drown himself in a pond, but is transformed into a trout trapped in the pond. As "Grandfather Trout" he can speak and serves as a conduit for the Drinkwaters to communicate with Faerie. After his transformation, the tarot cards are returned to the Drinkwaters, but subtly altered. Many of the later residents of the five nearby small towns are his illegitimate descendants. At the very end of the Tale the leader of the fairies tells him he will be restored to human form when one of his loves, Marge Juniper, now elderly, comes to his pond and speaks to him. *Auberon Drinkwater (the first Auberon) – Alice’s eccentric great-uncle, the son (by Oliver Hawksquill) who Violet was pregnant with when she met John Drinkwater. He cannot see or communicate with fairies, but attempts to record them, with variable success, by photographing them with his nieces Alice and Sophie as ″mediums″ of a sort, reminiscent of the Cottingley Fairies and of photos of children taken by
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...
. He is the teacher of the school for the children of the Edgewood area and spends his life in pursuit of concrete evidence of fairies, and in analysis of his findings. *George Mouse – Smoky’s friend who introduces Smoky to his cousins, the Drinkwater family. *Ariel Hawksquill – A powerful magician who studies the rise of Russell Eigenblick. Granddaughter of Violet Bramble’s first lover, Oliver Hawksquill. *Russell Eigenblick – The despotic president of the United States, late in the history of the family. He is revealed to be the former Holy Roman Emperor, awakened from 800 years' sleep. *Aunt Nora Cloud – Widow of Henry Cloud, expert card reader and one of the family′s chief oracles.


Literary significance

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...
included this work in his book ''
The Western Canon ''The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages'' is a 1994 book about Western literature by the American literary critic Harold Bloom, in which the author defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as c ...
'', calling it "A neglected masterpiece. The closest achievement we have to the Alice stories of
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...
." Bloom also recorded that, based on their correspondence, poet James Merrill "loved the book." Thomas M. Disch described ''Little, Big'' as "the best fantasy novel ever. Period."
Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the ''Earthsea'' fantas ...
wrote that ''Little, Big'' is "a book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy."David Pringle, ''Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946–1987'', David Pringle. London, Grafton Books, 1988 (p. 211-13) In '' Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels'',
David Pringle David Pringle (born 1 March 1950) is a Scottish science fiction editor and critic. Pringle served as the editor of '' Foundation'', an academic journal, from 1980 to 1986, during which time he became one of the prime movers of the collective whi ...
described the book as "a work of architectonic sublimity" and wrote that "the author plays with masterly skill on the emotional nerves of awe, rapture, mystery and enchantment." Paul Di Filippo said, "It is hard to imagine a more satisfying work, both on an artistic and an emotional level". Praise for the book has not been unanimous, however. Reviewing the novel for ''The Boston Phoenix'', John Domini termed it "a betrayal of nearly all its promises. The book may declaim continually, in reference to Fairy Land, that 'the farther in you go, the bigger it gets,' but this flabby tale gets less and less muscular as we peel back page after unnecessary page. Its failure, regrettably and oddly, is at heart one of imagination." A number of readers and critics have described ''Little, Big'' as
magical realism Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a style or genre of fiction and art that presents a realistic view of the world while incorporating magical elements, often blurring the lines between speculation and reality. ''Magical rea ...
, perhaps in an attempt to defend it from being categorized as a work belonging to the sometimes maligned field of
genre fiction In the book-trade, genre fiction, also known as formula fiction, or commercial fiction,Girolimon, Mars"Types of Genres: A Literary Guide" Southern New Hampshire University, 11 December 2023. Retrieved 3 September 2024. encompasses fictional ...
. However, the novel fits the classic description of low fantasy. Some list it among the early works of
urban fantasy Urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, placing supernatural elements in a contemporary urban area, urban-affected setting. The combination provides the writer with a platform for classic fantasy tropes, quixotic plot-elements, and unusual charac ...
or at least as a "classic" part of the movement that developed into it.


Awards and nominations

* Winner of the
World Fantasy Award The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year at the eponymous ann ...
, 1982 * Nominated for the
Nebula Award The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), a nonprofit association of pr ...
for Best Novel, 1981 * Nominated for the
Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and chosen by its members. The award is administered by th ...
for Best Novel, 1982 * Nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award, 1982 * Nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, 1982


Release details

*1981, USA, Bantam Books, , Pub date Sep 1981, trade paperback (black). Simultaneously published in Canada. *1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, , Pub date May 1982, hardcover (white dust jacket). *1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, , Pub date May 1982, trade paperback (white). *1983, UK, Methuen, , Pub date 1983, mass market paperback. *1983, USA, Bantam Books, , Pub date Oct 1983, mass market paperback. Yvonne Gilbert (front cover illustrator). *1986, UK, Methuen, , Pub date Nov 1986, mass market paperback. *1987, USA, Bantam Books, , Pub date Apr 1987, mass market paperback. *1990, USA, Bantam Books, , Pub date Nov 1990, mass market paperback. Tom Canty (front cover illustrator). *1994, USA, Bantam, , Pub date Sep 1994, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator). *1997, USA, Easton Press Masterpieces of Fantasy, hardcover. *1997, USA, Bantam /Science Fiction Book Club, , Pub date Aug 1997, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator). *2000, UK, Orion Books, , Pub date May 2000, trade paperback, volume 5 of the Fantasy Masterworks series. *2002, USA, Harper Perennial, , pub. date Mar 2002, trade paperback. *2006, USA, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, , Pub date Oct 2006, trade paperback. *2011, USA, Blackstone Audio, (CD) and (MP3-CD), pub. date 15 Dec 2011, audiobook. Read by the author, from the "Author's Preferred Text" created for the Incunabula edition. *2022, USA, Incunabula, (trade edition), (numbered edition), (lettered edition). Hardcover, nominally the 25th-anniversary edition with an afterword by Harold Bloom. Illustrations by Peter Milton.


Notes


External links


''Little, Big''
at Worlds Without End * {{John Crowley 1981 American novels American fantasy novels Novels by John Crowley Metafictional novels Novels about fairies American magic realism novels 1981 fantasy novels World Fantasy Award for Best Novel–winning works Cultural depictions of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor