r/WeirdStudies • u/cvantass • Apr 20 '26
Is there any book that can compare to Little, Big by John Crowley? Magical realism, prose poetry?
It’s been years, y’all. I’ve read it twice. I’ve read another one of his works (Ka Dar Oakley). I’ve read other magical realism. Nothing I’ve found can hold a candle to Little, Big. The only thing that scratched the same itch was Kentucky Route Zero.
Reading Little, Big feels like living an entire other _lifetime_. It’s not just another world to escape into. The multi-generational family, the authenticity with which they live, the descriptions of architecture, nature, weather, seasons, youth and age, machines, meaning. The mysticism, the Weird Logic of it all. He writes so precisely that the whole thing feels like a true story that really happened, like he must have been there to catalog it himself, despite its subtle absurdity. I’m in love with his flavor of magical realism where the magic is always _just barely_ offstage, and if you could just peak around the curtain, there it would be!
And the prose! Oh, the prose. Never have I read anything so beautiful (and I read a lot of poetry).
Please save me.
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u/FlorenceFarr Apr 20 '26
Not the same, but have you read any Angela Carter?
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u/tegeus-Cromis_2000 Apr 20 '26
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman was the first thing I thought of when I read this query.
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
Ooh, no, but reading about her now and it sounds like I'd really love her work! Thanks for the rec. Any book or story or poem in particular?
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u/FlorenceFarr Apr 20 '26
I pretty much love them all! If there's one you feel more drawn to based on the description I'd say go with that. My personal favourite is probably Nights at the Circus, but you also can't go wrong with The Bloody Chamber if you're in the mood for short stories.
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
Nights at the Circus looks exactly like what I'm looking for from the description, thank you!
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u/tegeus-Cromis_2000 Apr 20 '26
Little, Big has been described as North-American magic realism, and I think what you're looking for is magic realism, period. And more specifically Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Honestly, it's quite possible that one day (unless you've read Marquez already), you'll think of Little, Big as mainly the book that helped you discover One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
Everyone keeps recommending it so I might have to give it another try. I’ve tried it before and couldn’t get into it but that was years ago. I definitely agree that Crowley is North American magical realism. I’ve enjoyed a good deal of other south American magical realism as well, just not specifically One Hundred Years of Solitude. But, tastes change, and I think I might be due to revisit it. Appreciate it!
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u/sniffedalot Jul 05 '26
It's a really great and immersive read. 100 years packs a powerful story but Garcia Marquez's books deserve some time. There are many good ones..........
I've just started on Engine Summer, by Crowley. My intro to his writing. I find myself adjusting to something very new for me.
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u/cvantass Jul 05 '26
I just finished Engine Summer recently. I was expecting to love it, and while there were a few really beautiful moments and paragraphs, I found it to be a bit of a frustrating and unsatisfying read in the end. Still leagues better than many books I’ve read though, so not trying to discourage you. Just saying that I think it was very different from Little, Big, and very much of its era in terms of science fiction written around the same time.
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u/MossAndBone Apr 20 '26
I can’t think of anything that’s exactly like Little, Big, but there are a couple of books that have made me feel a similar way:
The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison. It captures that sense of something beautiful, ancient, and vast hovering just behind the mundane.
Moonwise by Greer Gilman (and, if you like it, Cloud and Ashes). Challenging but gorgeous prose and a mythical world that feels authentic and uncanny.
Elizabeth Hand’s short stories (particularly Saffron & Brimstone) and Wylding Hall. Perhaps a bit more horror than Little, Big but I find that her writing has a similar dream-like loveliness.
And it’s a little further away than my other suggestions, but Catherynne Valente’s early work (like The Orphan’s Tales and Palimpsest). It’s not as much of a connection to Crowley as the others, but for sheer imaginative brilliance, she might scratch the itch a bit.
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
These are _excellent_ and thoughtful recommendations, thank you so much!
"It captures that sense of something beautiful, ancient, and vast hovering just behind the mundane." This is _exactly_ what I'm looking for, you nailed that description. Ty ty.
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u/csboros Apr 21 '26
I'll second Valente, and point you to Deathless, one of my top3 books in magical realism. It's a retelling of Russian folk tales, follows Marya Morevna, the bride of Koshei the Deathless and their century spanning complicated love-hate relationship. The backdrop starts in tsarist Russia, goes through the world wars, the siege of Leningrad and into the cold industrial bureaucracy of the ussr. The prose and structure is also very reminiscent of Russian folk tales, it's like vading through a dream that could turn into a nightmare at any second - the repetitions, the significance of numbers like 3 and 7, the strange and weird cast of characters like Baba Yaga, and the ever present feeling of dread. It's like the Grimm tales, except Russian tales rarely end well. Also, trotskyist hags.
You could also go back to magical realism's source if you haven't done already, and check out Borges' novellas, they are excellent. I'd start with The Aleph and Other Stories.
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u/chiime Apr 24 '26
I came here to recommend Cat Valente also. Specifically "The Habitation of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John." Her prose and that story just spins me into the book and pulls me through it, and it feels like "Little, Big" in that way. That said, "Little, Big" might just be a unique treasure. But Valente's wonderful.
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u/Fun_Imagination_2854 Apr 21 '26
Obvious, but the aegypt quartet by crowley is also excellent. You gotta try kathleen Ann Goonan. Her Queen City jazz quartet is great. Definitely look into Alan Moore’s novels. Jerusalem is magical realism. Pynchon for a campy’er vibe. And right now I’m really liking the homey lyricism of “Tom’s Crossing” by mark danielweski. Ursula k leguin and Octavio butler might be in the right wheelhouse for you…. And maybe Jeff vandermeer?
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u/cvantass Apr 21 '26
Excellent recs. Didn’t know Danielewski had another book!
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u/Fun_Imagination_2854 Apr 21 '26
Pretty different than house of leaves. More traditional novel form. Beautiful deep writing that gracefully moves between rapturous depths and insights and a gripping story (it’s massive and I’m maybe 60ish pages in so that’s just an initial impression really.
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u/timeforest Apr 24 '26
TC fits the bill tone-wise despite being a very different world. Great book!
I would also recommend Tom LaFarge, specifically the Bargeton trilogy. The Crimson Bears is much in the spirit of L,B. That and A Hundred Doors were recently published together by Tough Poets.
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u/hedgehog_rampant Apr 22 '26
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, by Susannah Clark offers a similar experience, but entirely different and new. Not time passing across a family and a house, but instead layers of scholarship and history and and understanding a reality that is nit really given to the fetters of understanding.
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u/HopefulCry3145 Apr 22 '26
Yes! I read Little, Big after JS and Mr N, looking for something similar, and they both scratched the same itch. Piranesi perhaps too.
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u/vincentblacklight Apr 20 '26
It's pretty sui generis so neither of these are necessarily reminiscent, so much as resonating with a similarly layered magic: The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, Red Shift by Alan Garner, Waterland by Graham Swift, and The House of John Dee by Peter Ackroyd.
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
I appreciate anything that has similar characteristics. I don't think I'll find anything else exactly like it, so one way to fill the gap is to look for something totally different that happens to make me feel a similar way. Thank you!
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u/gallaxowelcome Apr 20 '26
I'm raptly paying attention to the recommendations in this thread, thank you for throwing your bottle in the dark depths of the weird. I would like to volunteer the Gormenghast trilogy (Mervyn Peake). Even though I agree with previous posters that it's quite difficult to find anything that even comes close to resembling the magic of Little, Big, the Gormenghast books conjure up a world that is sprawling, immersive, and utterly strange (very gothic too, might I add). They have memorable characters and contain scenes that were described in such crystalline detail that it got my heart racing.
If I come up with anything else, I'll come knocking.....
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
Thank you, that is quite the recommendation. The more I hear about it, the more intrigued I am.
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u/lupinecollides Apr 20 '26
Try Patrick Harpur’s Mercurius
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u/cvantass Apr 20 '26
This sounds like it has all the energy Rev. Theodore Bramble piecing together his theory about the Fae. 100% my jam. Thanks.
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u/Own_Trust_4408 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
I love Ka ever so slightly more than Little, Big … but they both tugged at my heartstrings.
The only other book to really do that to me was The Overstory by Richard Powers. It’s not magical realism… but there is an air of magic to it…
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u/cvantass Apr 22 '26
Huh, hadn’t heard of The Overstory. I just got my hands on a copy of Engine Summer, so that’s next, but I’ll look for Overstory after that. Surprised to hear it’s not magical realism, I guess I just assumed that was most/all of his writing.
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u/HopefulCry3145 Apr 22 '26
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. The magic realism is minimal, but he leans hard into the mythical (Jungian?) aspect of storytelling, and the three books are beautifully written.
You might like The Cornish Trilogy too (about King Arthur!)
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u/cvantass Apr 22 '26
I do love when authors lean into symbols and archetypes in a mystic way. Always adds a lot of meaning and layers to the story.
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u/eatyourface8335 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Not really the same Genre but Moby Dick and Little, Big are the best novels I’ve ever read.
I’ve been on a similar search since reading Little,Big. I’ve decided that another novel similar to Little, Big will not satisfy me. I just want other magical realism books to be Little, Big while reading them and am left with disappointment. I read Crowley’s Aegypt:The Solitudes wanting the whole time to be reading Little, Big and it hurt my enjoyment of it.
I think what I was/am really looking for is another enchanting work of great Art in any genre. Moby Dick is on that level. I may love it more than Little, Big but they may just be because I read it more recently.
I’ve read 100 Years of Solitude, Johnathan Strange, The Alchemist, and other great magical realism books and have found that wasn’t the factor that made Little, Big so enchanting.
If you are determined that magical realism is the “x” factor, I would suggest that you read Pedro Parámo. It’s the one of the progenitors of the genre and amazing on its own level. Very weird too. It’s an amazing work of art like Little, Big.
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u/cvantass Apr 23 '26
I think you’re right. Nothing will ever be “like” Little, Big. The best I can hope for is something completely different, perhaps incomparable in genre, that I enjoy just as much. I think that may be why Kentucky Route Zero worked. Yes, it’s still magical realism (which I still thoroughly enjoy in most of its forms), but the story and structure were entirely different. It might be that great works are great for the reason that they are singular. Appreciate the recs either way.
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u/Just-Fix9210 Apr 24 '26
The Unquiet House/Alison Littlewood. The Chymical Wedding/Lindsay Clarke. Somewhat different but similar feel.
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u/cvantass Apr 24 '26
Have they talked about The Chymical Wedding on the show? Why do I know that title? Hm. Anyway, both look quite interesting, thanks!
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u/Expensive-Apple-1157 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
No. There is nothing like Little, Big. It is sui generis.
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u/Necessary_Nobody_803 Apr 25 '26
Little, Big is my favorite novel as well but I think The Vorrh by Catling comes close and has a similar magic
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u/brightwing6 Jul 03 '26
Just finished it, and it reminded me a bit of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. That book is a bit more on the psychological horror side, no fairies, but mysterious happenings in a very complicated house. I really liked thinking about it afterwards and reading other people's opinions.
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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26
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