Little, Big

2011 books update

I finished Little, Big this morning. (Goodreads review here) I enjoyed it and I know the review is a bit vague but I rather think that’s what the book needs. Summarizing plot points isn’t helpful and it’s hard to characterize a novel like this. It’s fantastical but not strictly fantasy and, as in most ‘genre’ books tackles questions that are bigger than the book (see also: title).

While listening to a Books on the Nightstand podcast last week, I got annoyed because they were discussing authors making the ‘leap’ from literary to genre fiction and how the “characters in horror can sometimes be two dimensional” and that literary writers can bring “more to them”. This is the sort of commentary I expect from people who don’t read books. I’ve not read a single GOOD novel that had two dimensional characters REGARDLESS of genre. Slapping that generalization on any one genre should be embarrassing to the person providing commentary.

They were discussing The Passage and while I liked that book, I didn’t love it. Read Feed or Boneshaker or God’s War and tell me that a ‘literary’ writer would do better. I don’t believe it. As evidence, I’ll offer that all these books are ones I WANT to read the sequel to (unlike The Passage).