The Giant's House: A Romance

By Elizabeth McCracken

Book Overview

"McCracken mixes the proper amount of lunacy with exactly the right amount of sorrow. The blend is reminiscent of such late-20th-century treasures as The Accidental Tourist, The World According to Garp , or A Confederacy of Dunces ."-- Denver Post The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt- the "over-tall" eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of the town-walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined in ways that neither one could have predicted. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows- six foot five at age twelve, then seven feet, then eight-so does her heart and their most singular romance. Praise for The Giant's House "Remarkable . . . McCracken has wit and subtlety to burn, as well as an uncanny ability to tap into the sadness that runs through the center of her characters' worlds. This book is so lovely that, when you're reading, you'll want to sleep with it under your pillow." -- Salon A true marvel . . . thoroughly enjoyable from its unlikely beginning to its bittersweet end. . . McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Lovely . . . a tribute to the quiet passion of people trapped in isolation." -- Los Angeles Times "Fascinating . . . The reader finds herself entangled, body and soul, in this tender and endlessly strange novel, which is in all senses a hymn to human growth gone haywire and to a love so big it can't hold its own magnificent limbs upright." -- Elle "Such is the incantatory power of McCracken's eccentric tale that by its close we are completely in the grip of its strangely conceived ardor. . . . McCracken is as original a writer as they come. . . . I fell in love." --Daphne Merkin, The New Yorker

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385340893
• ISBN13: 9780385340892
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Dial Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Sentences so good you have to read them twice!

I've re-read this book a couple of times now, and each time I find myself moved by this touching story. When I first read the back of the book, I was intrigued by its original concept. A librarian and the world's tallest boy? Subtitled A Romance? I feared that it could be one of those books that tries so hard to be quirky, but ends up turning its characters into caricatures that we can't identify with and losing us with its twisted plotlines, all in the name of originality. This is not the case with The Giant's House. Both Peggy and James, as well as some of the minor characters like James' mother, captured my heart. A previous reader described the narrative as "quiet" and I find that word is particularly fitting. The parts that move you aren't flashy, or filled with action, but are careful, truthful depictions of life's sadnesses and joys. While it's true that we have more insight into Peggy (due to the first-person narration), there are several scenes that let us into James' huge shoes, giving us just a glimpse of what it might like to be the world's tallest boy--I'm thinking of the wedding dance and the feet scene especially. The ending put me off a little on first reading, but subsequent readings make me realize that I, like Peggy, didn't want to let James go. A highly original novel filled with scenes and sentences of pure poetry. Highly recommended.

Great characters; beautiful language; unforgettable read

M. TurpinThis amazing novel takes place in a New England tourist town where summers are unimportant: "In the dark privacy of winter Brewsterville's citizens were more likely to drink, weep, have affairs, tell off-color jokes, let themselves go." Similarly, the book's protagonist and narrator, Peggy Court, is a woman who lives silently, in the darkness of her own self-hatred. What makes this book captivating and upbeat is that Court finds her way out of her own darkness, and she does it by forging paths few others would imagine. "I wanted," the character says, "to out-Houdini Houdini, but in reverse. I wanted not to escape, but to enter, to insinuate myself into the smallest places in that house ... I wanted to get myself so caught they'd have to let me stay. Look, they'd say, how did she manage that? That space isn't big enough for anyone. Look at her: she's surely trapped."McCracken is a rare combination: she writes like a poet, but has a gift for illustrious, fascinating characters. Her first-person narrator is so vivid and constant, that despite her obvious shortsightedness, you very quickly find yourself perceiving the universe unself-consciously through her eyes. Peggy Court is a woman so hollowed out by loneliness that even socks seem lucky to her because "Socks mate for life." She sees herself as unlovable, and describes herself as waiting for love "as though I were a pin sunk deep in a purse, waiting for a magnet to prove me metal." She is also a person oblivious to her rare ability to dismiss flaws in others and to value them despite their quirks: She warms to another woman because "I've always found a certain sullenness comforting," and says of her, "Even now I remember Mrs. Sweatt as the embodiment of every sad love song ever written; she believed every musical statement of what love did to you when it went wrong, how it was like a poison without an antidote, how you'd never breathe right again. Most people feel that way only when the music plays; all her days, Mrs. Sweatt's heat was tuned to some radio frequency crammed with tragedy."None of the characters in this novel are important people - and none of them are ordinary. First of all, there's the giant, James Sweatt, who accepts his life-threatening condition with alternate offerings of resignation and anger, whose gigantism renders him frequently homebound, and who consequently is someone who "loved what you could get through the mail. Eventually he had dozens of degrees from correspondence schools and was a mail-order minister several times over." McCracken never lets her pen slip - she brings every character vividly to life. Even the lesser characters seem destined to stay with you permanently.McCracken has a flair for rich dialogue, and this is nowhere more evident than in those passages where she allows the minor characters Leila (a chance encounter from a circus, the smallest woman in the world), and James's father, Mr. Sweat, to talk themselves into exi

Utter Delight

Elizabeth McCraken has woven a most wonderful tale of bittersweet love between a small town boy-giant and a librarian, fourteen years his senior. Peggy Cort and James Sweatt are at first an unlikely pair, but through closer investigation of their relationship it appears they are a perfect match. McCracken has crafted a delightfully unique story that will not be soon forgotten. I can't say much more for fear of spoiling the secret of this hidden gem of a book.

The Giant's House captures the beauty of romance

The Giant's House is a novel written as a romance - a romance being the notion of love between two people which encompasses one's being, one's existence. The story revolves around two people who suffer from distinct afflicitions - Giantism (an afflicition of the body) and lonliness (an afflication of the spirit). These 2 people - the giant and lonely librarian - develope a romance which fulfills the body and spirit and through this romance they each attain life's meaning and define their own existence. Their relationship is special as is this novel. Ms. McCracken - an ex-librarian herself - writes with meaningful words and a style which encompasses the vitality of romance. However, Ms. McCracken does not write what one may consider "a romance novel." She is not sappy with her words or her notion of romance. She is, however, true to the human condition of love we all yearn and dream of, no matter what ails us - physically or emotionally. A National Book Award finalist - this book is much deserved. We should all read and learn from this book about love, about the individuality of others and, above all, about the human spirituality of romance.

Quirky, intelligent, romantic. Please read this book.

McCracken is one of Granta's 20 best young American novelists, and she deserves the distinction. Her first novel is a romantic look into the heart of Peggy Cort, a New England librarian, who falls in love with the world's tallest boy. It's bitingly sarcastic when it needs to be, and an odd, almost old-fashioned romance througout. McCracken proved herself a brilliant writer in her short story collection Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry, but here she proves to us that exploring the nature of longing and the hidden spaces of the human heart can be as funny, as sexy, and as adventurous as anything we'll ever see at the movies. You must read this novel--it will change your heart.