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bookishcassie's review against another edition
4.0
Slow. Burn.
Loved everyone by the end, especially Peggy.
(Reiterates that even brilliant authors have trouble ending books)
Loved everyone by the end, especially Peggy.
(Reiterates that even brilliant authors have trouble ending books)
mathteachtaco's review against another edition
4.0
National Book Award finalist for 1996 and one of Liberty Hardy's favorite books. I'll be seeking more from this author. I think I saw myself a bit in the protagonist: consider the first lines "I do not love mankind. People think their interesting. That's their first mistake." Peggy Cort is a spinster librarian whose life is changed forever when a young boy, James Carlson Sweatt, begins coming into the library regularly to take out books. He's a giant, in the medical sense, with an unconventional mother and absent father.
juneofthemoon's review against another edition
2.0
This book was nothing like what I expected. Many times I don't read up on books too much before I crack them open because I don't want other people's opinion to color my own experience too heavily. I was intrigued at first but the plot then lost me and I couldn't relate to the main character in any way. Bummer of a book.
glassesgirl79's review against another edition
5.0
I love "The Giant's House" for various reasons and I feel that this is probably one of the best books I've read in a long, long time. The reason I give this novel such high praise is simple: It's a wonderful book written by a talented author.
What first drew me to this book was the characters in the story. I could sympathize with the young book because I too grew up being taller that most kids my age and I also sought comfort at the library. I could too relate to the librarian who although she was an "old maid" sought to have a relationship with this the man which surpassed any type of sexual interaction.
From reading this book, I learned several things about myself that I didn't realize. By this I mean that I left this book seeing that everyone needs someone in this world to connect with. Also, even though these two characters were completely different from one another, they still managed to have a beautiful relationship.
In closing, maybe if we all took the time to get to know someone other than ourselves, other than someone within our race, gender, or age group, then maybe we could not only gain wisdom, but also get an experience of a lifetime as well.
What first drew me to this book was the characters in the story. I could sympathize with the young book because I too grew up being taller that most kids my age and I also sought comfort at the library. I could too relate to the librarian who although she was an "old maid" sought to have a relationship with this the man which surpassed any type of sexual interaction.
From reading this book, I learned several things about myself that I didn't realize. By this I mean that I left this book seeing that everyone needs someone in this world to connect with. Also, even though these two characters were completely different from one another, they still managed to have a beautiful relationship.
In closing, maybe if we all took the time to get to know someone other than ourselves, other than someone within our race, gender, or age group, then maybe we could not only gain wisdom, but also get an experience of a lifetime as well.
mimima's review against another edition
2.0
I heard this recommended on a Podcast (I thought it was Recommended, but I am not finding it there) and was delighted when I discovered it at a used book store. However, the uncomfortableness of the Giant and the narrator meeting when he was 11 and her considering, in her telling, that she became enamored of him at that time, to be too uncomfortable to settle in to the love story.
florapants84's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the strangest, loveliest books I've read thus far. Staring at my hardcover edition lying on my coffee table, I realize why it I purchased it in the first place. It has a simple bright orange dustjacket, and it stands taller and narrower than its shelf counterparts–no doubt a tribute to the larger than life protagonist of this novel.
Peggy Cort is a twenty-six-year-old librarian in a small Cape Cod town in 1950. When she meets James Sweatt, a "tall" eleven-year-old boy (and still growing), she immediately feels a connection and love for him. By his eighteenth birthday, James is well over eight feet tall, and is showing no signs of stopping. Over time, the two form a deep, complex friendship–two lonely misfits searching for something they can't define.
McCracken has a beautiful way with words. At times caustic, at other turns gentle and caressing, it's hard not to be captured by this simple story. Peggy, inaccessible to people and love in general, opens herself up to James, and to readers. She's intelligent, and funny...and she breaks your heart. I just love her. I love the way she loves. It's so selfless and all consuming.
Peggy Cort is a twenty-six-year-old librarian in a small Cape Cod town in 1950. When she meets James Sweatt, a "tall" eleven-year-old boy (and still growing), she immediately feels a connection and love for him. By his eighteenth birthday, James is well over eight feet tall, and is showing no signs of stopping. Over time, the two form a deep, complex friendship–two lonely misfits searching for something they can't define.
McCracken has a beautiful way with words. At times caustic, at other turns gentle and caressing, it's hard not to be captured by this simple story. Peggy, inaccessible to people and love in general, opens herself up to James, and to readers. She's intelligent, and funny...and she breaks your heart. I just love her. I love the way she loves. It's so selfless and all consuming.
By now you are tired of me insisting, but it wasn't sex. Well, it was, in this way: all I wanted was to become a part of him, to affect him physically. Maybe that's all anybody ever wants, and sex is the most specific and efficient way to achieve it.
But that night I did not want sex. I wanted to drape myself over his body and be absorbed, so when I left (and I knew I would have to), we would average out: two moderately cold people, two moderately sickly people, two–well, two extraordinarily tall people. Still the two tallest people you'd ever seen. But we'd have each other, we'd share the burden.
jereco1962's review against another edition
4.0
While I did enjoy this book a great deal, I understand why some are off-put by the central character: she's self-pitying to the point where I wanted to slap her (hard) and tell her to seek help. And that's not her only failing...but the author has imbued her with some very clever views, a remarkable prose style and a wry sense of humor that saved her for me. If you've heard that it's a sort of distaff Lolita, you would be right. But not as creepy, and this narrator is a finer writer than Nabokov allowed Humbert Humbert to be.
The major qualm I have is that this book contains that same disclaimer that so many works of fiction do - you've seen these words before: "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental." Hogwash. I call shenanigans, Ms. McCracken. Regarding your novel, that statement is disingenuous at best (and a flat-out lie at worst). The giant of the title is a young man who grows to be the tallest person in the world. He is based quite obviously on Robert Pershing Wadlow - the actual young man who holds that title to this day, despite passing away in 1940. McCracken tweaks a couple of things: she shifts the time period about 15 years, her character is a few inches shorter (8'7" instead of 8'11"), some pounds lighter (418 lbs. vs. 490) and he only lives to 20 years of age (vs. 22). But SO many other details are so specific as to be beyond coincidence: both had their shoes made for free by a shoe company in exchange for public appearances; both appeared with Barnum and Bailey - and in street clothes rather than costumes; both rode in cars with the front passenger seat removed to give them leg room; both walked with a cane and leg braces; both lacked feeling in their legs and died from an infection caused by the leg braces; both died in their sleep; both were buried in concrete to prevent grave-robbers from digging up their bodies and both lived in homes that were later called The Giant's House.
I understand the desire to appropriate this young man's life and alter names and details to fit the novel - this is not a biography, after all - but to pretend that he never existed, and that the details of his life didn't inform this work...well, that's not kosher, at all. You can't commit libel against the dead, so it isn't as if there were some legal need for that wording in the book. Tony Kushner admits that he changed many details of Roy Cohn's story to fit his Angels in America plays - and even so he kept the guy's name and persona intact. This was a more benign usage of a person's biographical details, but by using that standard fiction disclaimer, she disrespects the poor man in the worst possible way: by ignoring him completely.
The major qualm I have is that this book contains that same disclaimer that so many works of fiction do - you've seen these words before: "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental." Hogwash. I call shenanigans, Ms. McCracken. Regarding your novel, that statement is disingenuous at best (and a flat-out lie at worst). The giant of the title is a young man who grows to be the tallest person in the world. He is based quite obviously on Robert Pershing Wadlow - the actual young man who holds that title to this day, despite passing away in 1940. McCracken tweaks a couple of things: she shifts the time period about 15 years, her character is a few inches shorter (8'7" instead of 8'11"), some pounds lighter (418 lbs. vs. 490) and he only lives to 20 years of age (vs. 22). But SO many other details are so specific as to be beyond coincidence: both had their shoes made for free by a shoe company in exchange for public appearances; both appeared with Barnum and Bailey - and in street clothes rather than costumes; both rode in cars with the front passenger seat removed to give them leg room; both walked with a cane and leg braces; both lacked feeling in their legs and died from an infection caused by the leg braces; both died in their sleep; both were buried in concrete to prevent grave-robbers from digging up their bodies and both lived in homes that were later called The Giant's House.
I understand the desire to appropriate this young man's life and alter names and details to fit the novel - this is not a biography, after all - but to pretend that he never existed, and that the details of his life didn't inform this work...well, that's not kosher, at all. You can't commit libel against the dead, so it isn't as if there were some legal need for that wording in the book. Tony Kushner admits that he changed many details of Roy Cohn's story to fit his Angels in America plays - and even so he kept the guy's name and persona intact. This was a more benign usage of a person's biographical details, but by using that standard fiction disclaimer, she disrespects the poor man in the worst possible way: by ignoring him completely.
patrick_114's review against another edition
3.0
ambivalence is what i mainly feel about this book. good writing but i had difficulty empathizing with the narrator/protagonist.
thisistanya's review against another edition
3.0
I was surprised, pleasantly. The author managed to paint a portrait of a sad, sweet, intelligent boy, and the height thing was almost an afterthought. I found it also interesting that Peggy, the librarian, in her normal height and stature was more... damaged... in her interactions with people, than an 8 foot tall teenage boy who was home-schooled, had never been kissed, and knew he wouldn't live long on this Earth.