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May. 27th, 2009 10:15 am![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Anyway, the first thing to say about Little, Big is that it is a gorgeously, gorgeously written book. Seriously, the prose is some of the most beautiful I have ever read, and it's probably worth the read for that alone.
As for the plot - well, there is sort of a plot, but most of the meat of the story is about waiting. Four or five generations of a family with a very faint link to a kind of fairyland, around which there is a vague sense that some kind of important story is eventually going to happen in which the sum of their lives and choices will play some kind of important role. Some of them believe in this more than others; none of them really know specifically what, or how, or what kind of sacrifices they'll have to make, and that sense of waiting and importance basically shapes their lives. For me, this was completely fascinating for about two-thirds of the book. I was 100% absorbed in the prose and the just slightly surreal atmosphere and the mostly-ordinary characters with the hint of mythology about them.
Which is kind of a shame, because I could not quite get back into it even for the ending, and I have a feeling that if I'd still been completely in the book the way I was at the beginning the ending would have worked a lot better for me. And I wish it had, because it was really very cool! It's just, to fully appreciate it, I suspect one has to be completely involved in the world and the prose, and at that point I wasn't anymore. I will probably reread it sometime and skip the bit that lost me, just to see if I can get a better sense of the ending that way.
(Not reading it on a bus may help too.)