(urth) If I already like ...

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Jeff Wilson jwilson at clueland.com
> On 4/18/2012 12:07 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> From: Jeff Wilson jwilson at clueland.com>
>>> On 4/18/2012 6:59 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>>> On 4/17/2012 10:42 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>>>> _Little, Big_ was a disappointment for me. Part of the novel is 
> urban,
>>>>> but the specks of actual fantasy come before and after.
>> 
>> There's a brownie in the City, and what appears to be an animated 
> statue, and the killing of a changeling (that eats hot coals), and a gateway to 
> Faerie and a way to communicate to someone in Faerie, and a resurrected 
> Barbarossa.
> 
> None of that seemed to make a difference to the plot,

I didn't know that was your criterion.  The gateway to Faerie certainly made a difference to the Auberon-Sylvie part of the plot.
  The brownie is mostly there as decoration and to tell you something about Sylvie.  The changeling story resolves a minor part of the plot.  The statue tells you something about Hawksquill.  But I may be spoiling too much.

> being more along the lines 
> of conceits or dreams on the parts of various fallible people.

Why did you read it that way?  I read all those things as "real" in the story, and I can't imagine reading it differently.

> The concept of 
> people shrinking as they go farther toward some unreachable center of being so 
> that there is room for ever more incredible places and beings is fascinating, 
> but if it is more than a metaphor, I lost it in the character drama along with 
> all the above.
> 
> I might give it another shot sometime, but I'd need some kind of really 
> juicy spoiler to motivate me.

Personally, I'm not trying to motivate you to do anything, and I doubt there are any spoilers to give you.

Jerry Friedman