trope |trōp| noun a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression: he used the two-Ameri

Reviews for Little, Big: “Who's running the world? In Little, Big by John Crowley, politics are controlled by a cabal of men in suits called the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club.” –David Langford, paraphrased

“When the mind turns from progress to conservative, it turns to a solicitude for the past that contains a real element of hopelessness. It may be this hopelessness to which Crowley is giving due in the never-named melancholy of Little, Big. Perhaps disillusionment and acceptance is replaced by what the Welsh call “hiraeth” and the Russians call “life-gladness:” a melancholy so deep that it amounts to joyfulness, or likewise a joyfulness that does not require happiness. In such a setting happiness, the real homely thing, is the most radical of all. The irony is one cannot escape by traveling unless one is very privileged; the rest must be content with that most undesirable of moods–happiness, absent pursuit. Those who wander are lost, and they are probably lost forever.” –Tanya B. Avakian, paraphrased