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A review by florapants84
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
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.