For those of you who have read John Crowley...?

Question

Are any of his other books as good as Little, Big, one of my favorite novels ever?

Answer 1

The trilogy is, but it's different than Little, Big. It's also hard to find, and you need to read it in order for it to make any sense at all: Love and Sleep, Aegypt, Daemonomania. It's two stories intertwined, and Giordano Bruno figures heavily in the plot. The characters are absorbing and very real, but it's a very long story.

I also liked his earliest works: Engine Summer, (NOT about cars,) in particular. It's basically science fiction/fantasy about a future post-apocalyptic time when stories are all that are left to the human population. Very interesting premise and again, the characters are wonderful.

The problem with reading Little, Big first is that you sort of expect the rest of his stuff to be as delightful and sweet--but it's not. The Trilogy is very dark indeed, the Translator is completely unlike anything else he's written, the early short works are also completely different--he started out as a sci-fi writer--and his latest, "Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land" is just a choreI hated it. I've never seen a book that was harder to read! There is a compilation of his early stuff that's worth looking for; it will save you trying to track down any of the individual novellas. A good source for Crowley is alibris.com--they have it all and very inexpensively! They also have some fine first-editions, and some British versions of Little, Big.

Though Crowley is one of the most incredibly gifted writers I've ever read, he does not fall into a genre easily. Little, Big is definitely a standalone novel. It's also my favorite book of all time.