It is a nearly indescribable book that combines fantasy with family drama and myth and tarot and memory palaces until everything is utter madness, but gloriously so.Ĭrowley writes more beautifully than anyone else and my ragged, water-stained copy of Little, Big is so underlined, there is scarcely an unmarked page.

They live in a house called Edgewood, which doesn’t appear on any maps and quite possibly leads to fairyland. Mother beside him dreamed her husband wasn't in his study at all, but with her in the kitchen, where she drew tin cookie-sheets endlessly out of the oven the baked things on them were brown and round, and when he asked her what they were, she said 'Years'.Little, Big is a sprawling family saga about four generations of the Drinkwater family. One June he puts on his summer straw, and takes his pipe and his staff and his lamp in half his hands, and follows the worm and the root to the stair that leads up to the door into blue summer.' This seemed immensely significant to him, but when he awoke he wouldn't be able to remember a word of it, try as he might. Drinkwater dreamed he sat before his typewriter and wrote this: 'There is an aged, aged insect who lives in a hole in the ground. Far down the hall, Sophie dreamed that there was a tiny door in her elbow, open a crack, through which the wind blew, blowing on her heart. “While the moon smoothly shifted the shadows from one side of Edgewood to the other, Daily Alice dreamed that she stood in a flower-starred field where on a hill there grew an oak tree and a thorn in deep embrace, their branches intertwined like fingers. He wasn't sure he wasn't himself the cause of it, wasn't sure if she would cling to him for comfort or break him in rage, but he had no choice anyway, savior or sacrifice, it didn't matter so long as she could cease suffering.” When he tried to take her hand, speak softly to her, she only trembled more violently, the red cross branded on her face grew uglier so he enveloped her, smothered the flames, Disregarding her resistance, as well as he could he covered her, having a vague idea that he could by tenderness invade her and then rout her grief, whatever it was, by main strength. Smokey, afraid and awed, came immediately to her as he might to rescue his child from a fire, without thought and without knowing quite what he would do.

She seemed to be split or torn by the force of the tears, which she squeezed her eyes shut against, which she forced back with her fist against her lips. “The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see.

Little big crowley