To make matters even more frustrating we know that Daily Alice, her mother, aunt, sister, and daughters are all in the know. Smoky and Auberon's frustration is our frustration, as we're all locked out of this glorious and fulfilling life for no reason other than that we weren't born to it. Just as these characters constantly feel that there is some deeper truth being kept from them, so does the reader constantly strain to see the faerie world lurking under the world we live in. He allies the reader with the two least magical and mundane of characters in Smoky Barnable and later his son Auberon. With careful craftmanship Crowley pulls off quite the literary feat. But let's leave all of that external criticism behind and look at the actual text itself. In many ways I see Little, Big as this effort to build a new European mythos where the previous indigenous one is unknown through wilful ignorance and unserving through lack of understanding. I think Crowley deliberately avoided native American myth because there's no way his story could have sat next to it or been justified in its presence. The native American myths, stories and connection to country were decimated over centuries and they provide a rich tapestry not just of folklore but of knowledge on how to live on American soil from shore to shining shore. It brutally suppressed and destroyed them over a few hundred years and in some places they hang on by a few spindly threads. The thing is, America already has dozens of mythologies.

He created a compelling and fascinating work but one that feels incredibly constipated and rather vacuous.

I mention this because I got the sense that John Crowley was attempting the same feat for America with Little, Big. An exceptionally lofty goal and frankly one he wasn't far off achieving. When asked about the genesis for Lord of the Rings, Tolkien often talked of the desire to write a new English mythology.

Little big by john crowley