Read Little: A Novel Storyline:
*"An amazing achievement...A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself." --Gregory Maguire, New York Times *bestselling author of Wicked*
*The wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud.
In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and . . . at the wax museum, heads are what they do.
In the tradition of Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Edward Carey's Little is a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel--a story of art, class, determination, and how we hold on to what we love.
**Review
*Praise for Little *and Edward Carey
“A wonderfully weird exploration of spectacles, from wax heads to revolutions, that will delight lovers of the macabre.” —BookPage**
“Lavishly illustrated with Marie’s strange and compelling drawings, Edward Carey’s Little is a boldly original reimagining of the life of the woman who would become the legendary Madame Tussaud.” —Library Journal, Fall Editors’ Pick
“Carey channels the ghosts of Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, and the Brothers Grimm to tell Marie's tale, populating it with grotesques and horrors worthy of Madame Tussaud's celebrated wax museum… A quirky, compelling story that deepens into a meditation on mortality and art.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“There is nothing ordinary about this book, in which everything animate and inanimate lives, breathes, and remembers. Carey, with sumptuous turns of phrase, fashions a fantastical world that churns with vitality, especially his “Little,” a female Candide at once surreal and full of heart.” —Publisher's Weekly (starred)
“An immensely creative epic…Mingling a sense of playfulness with macabre history, Carey depicts the excesses of wealth and violence during the French Revolution through the eyes of a talented woman who lived through it and survived…The unique perspective, witty narrative voice, and clever illustrations make for an irresistible read.”* —Booklist* (starred)
“Don’t miss this eccentric charmer! Little, by Edward Carey, narrated by Madame Tussaud of waxworks fame, [on] her strange life and times, including the almost fatal French Revolution, a prime season for heads.” —Margaret Atwood, on Twitter
“Little is bawdy, tragic, mesmerizing, hilarious. If you’ve forgotten why you’d even read a novel, Edward Carey is here to set you straight.” —Alexander Chee
“Little is exquisitely sensitive to all the warmth, vigor, humor, woe, and peculiarities of human nature, as if the writer had a dowsing rod capable of divining what hides within the human heart. Carey is without peer.” —Kelly Link
“A deliciously disturbing treasure of a novel. Sensual, unassumingly poignant, heartbreaking, cruel, joyous: Edward Carey’s Little is a triumph and one of the most intoxicating novels I’ve read. I never wanted to leave Marie’s side.” —Sarah Schmidt
“An amazing achievement…A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself.”
—Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of *Wicked*
*
Review
'Don't miss this eccentric charmer!' (Margaret Atwood)
"Little‘ is that rare thing – a unique novel with a unique and fully-realised voice, rich in deadpan wit and surgically precise observation. By turns tragic, bizarre and deeply moving Little introduces readers to a heroine like no other and a book that will truly last. It is an absolute delight.’ (A.L Kennedy)
'Edward Carey is one of the strangest writers we are privileged to have in this country’ (The Observer)
'If this were music, Carey would be Eric Satie. If it were film, he would be Tim Burton’ (Newsday)
'Edward Carey is an enormously talented writer’ (Publishers Weekly)
'An exquisitely disturbing treasure of a novel. Sensual, unassumingly poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking, cruel, joyous: Edward Carey's LITTLE is a triumph and one of the most intoxicating novels I've read.' (Sarah Schmidt, author of SEE WHAT I HAVE)
'Carey writes with such persuasive authority, and we are inclined to believe him’ (New York Times Review of Books)
'Conveyed with so much sympathy and acute observation that it is hard not to be beguiled’ (The Times)
‘Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising, philosophical’ (Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries)
'It's hard to imagine a better subject for Edward Carey's particular genius than the life of Madame Tussaud’ (Charles Lambert)
Pages of Little: A Novel :
