It’s a wonderful rainy day in my part of the world and a perfect time to take up reading the next novel in John Crowley‘’s six book series: Little, Big, The Faeries’s Parliament. I’ve had enough of “reality” for now. Although you know what they say about fiction…

Stories are often truer than facts. 

Little, Big won the World Fantasy Award in 1982. The deeper I get into it the more I appreciate the vast world Crowley has created. From what I’ve been able to piece together so far, the story is about the faerie realm (and our own since we share it with them) being built on concentric rings. We are slowly guided into understanding that humans forced the faerie folk (nature spirits) to retreat into a smaller, nearly invisible existence. They are the littles and humans are the bigs.

But size relationships are metaphorical, after all, as in all fairytales. By the same token, the faeries have knowledge about the future and the further one travels into the faerie realm (which we may think of as another dimension) the bigger that world becomes. Now I may need to revise this as I read more because the author uses advanced structure (it’s non-linear) combined with an omniscient POV. These two qualities of writing lend the tale tremendous scope and depth-of -field.

More will be revealed…

Here is an excerpted question from the literary critic Harold Bloom, who wrote the afterword for the 25th edition to give you an idea.

According to Wikipedia, Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale. He died in 2019.

“It’s as though,” Daily Alice said, “each day is like a step, and every step takes you away from – well, from when things made more sense. When things were all alive, and made signs to you. And you can no more take a step farther away than you could not live through a day.”

Crowley, John (from Little, Big or The Faeries’ Parliament) Brother North Wind’s Secret, p. 193, Fortieth Anniversary Trade Edition