(no subject)
The novel Little, Big by John Crowley is probably one of my favorite books. It isn't an easy book to read, and it certainly isn't short, but it's full of the sort of layered language and subtle magic that you hope every book you read will have.
Trying to describe the book to friends is nearly impossible. Magic realism? Fantasy? Yes, but the terms don't quite give you a sense of the novel. It's an enormous hodge-podge of mythic images, faery tales, people, tarot cards, houses, doors, photgraphs, and paths that lead other than where you expect them. It's full of things that are just out of sight, magic that is alluded to, and all the seasons; winter, spring, summer, and fall, rolling on through the years.
It was published in 1981 and won the World Fantasy award. I bought a paperback copy sometime in the eighties, and knew it was something special, even if I didn't quite understand it.
I found it slow going at the time, and wondered if I'd ever be able to finish it. I started it a dozen times before I finally finished it, which I know doesn't sound promising in a book, but I did start it again each of those twelve times.
I suppose that it was a challenging book, and we've all had experience with a challenging book. Sometimes when you come across a book, one of those that is difficult to read or that takes a slower reading of the text, it's because the author isn't very good or that he or she is simply being intentionally abstruse. Sometimes I get the sense from some books that the author is speaking in their own little made up language that they expect you to translate, rather than writing something clearly.
And then there are those rare occasions when you read something in which the author is trying to convey something subtle, something that can't be reduced to simple sentences, something that requires layers of words to capture it whole. The Name of the Rose, another un-simple book that I liked, was a bit like this.