I do not love mankind.People think they're interesting. That's their first mistake. Every retiree you meet wants to supply you with his life story.
Description:
A deceptively compelling and passionate novel, Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House: A Romance slowly crept up on me and pulled me into its characters' minds and hopes so thoroughly that their images and words still haunt my thoughts. These are such deeply caring, sensitive, and complex characters with lives, dreams, and isolation so real that you can see and understand them completely.
Narrator Peggy Cort, a recent library school graduate, is now in charge of a small public library on Cape Cod in 1950. She feels she is a woman people probably think is crazy, and for her part holds no love for her other patrons. She loves books, order, quiet, and knowing the answers to questions.
Eventually, when James does not come into her library for several weeks, Peggy goes to his house to inquire about him. She meets his protective mother who was deserted by James' father. Despite their dissimilarities, Peggy feels a kinship with this woman:
James continues to grow and grow and grow over the years, eventually standing over 8 feet before he is 18, experiencing the frustrations of clothes, movement, fatigue, and isolation. Peggy comes by after work each day to sit with him and his teenage friends, watching him interact with them, growing closer and closer to him in her mind. She never reveals her feelings to James as he gives no indication that he looks on her as anything other than a friend to talk with who brings him books and sits with him.
Peggy shares many hours talking or just sitting with and observing James, alone with her thoughts but comfortable in the presence of a great friend. Author McCracken is highly skilled in gradually, patiently unveiling the minds of these lovely, sensitive characters. What goes on in the mind and daily life of a giant? Or in the mind of a spinster librarian for that matter? Their conversations and the gentle exposure of each of their lives are the heart and soul of the book.
The Giant's House is full of joy and sadness, passion and isolation, hope and resignation, as two uniquely singular people meet and interact for whatever time they have. Together they share one thought. As Peggy states:
Happy reading.
Narrator Peggy Cort, a recent library school graduate, is now in charge of a small public library on Cape Cod in 1950. She feels she is a woman people probably think is crazy, and for her part holds no love for her other patrons. She loves books, order, quiet, and knowing the answers to questions.
People think librarians are unromantic, unimaginative. This is not true. We are people whose dreams run in particular ways...The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.
As a librarian, I longed to be acknowledged, even to be taken for granted. I sat at the desk, brimming with books reviews, information, warnings, all my good school, advice. I wanted people to constantly callously approach ... I had gone to school to learn how to help them, but they believed I was simply a clerk who stamped their books. All it takes is a patron asking. And then asking again.But underneath her outwardly quiet, private, and slightly abrasive demeanor, there is a romantic spirit which dreams of a meaningful love.
Truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. I don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my whole life, who says, "I know, me too." I want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, "and then what, and then what?"
But you can't spend your life hoping that people will ask you the right questions. You must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask. Otherwise you're dreaming of visiting Venice by driving to Boise, Idaho.When 11-year-old James Sweat enters her library on a school field trip, Peggy senses something different about him -- beyond the fact that he was taller than most men even at that young age. She sees that James is interested in learning, in books, and having his questions answered. They become a perfect fit: he requesting information on a topic of interest, she recommending books. Although they don't talk much, Peggy is drawn to this tall, tall boy.
Eventually, when James does not come into her library for several weeks, Peggy goes to his house to inquire about him. She meets his protective mother who was deserted by James' father. Despite their dissimilarities, Peggy feels a kinship with this woman:
We were too old to be unmarried, and odd, surely matchless. But here's the difference: she was ruined by love -- that's how she put it -- while I was ruined by the lack of it.Peggy for the first time observes James' cramped home and lifestyle. She decides to become a regular visitor to James after work, bringing him books and talking or just sitting with him. Eventually she organizes the community to donate money, materials, and labor to build him his own over-sized cottage in his family's backyard complete with large-size furniture and high ceilings -- the Giant's House.
James continues to grow and grow and grow over the years, eventually standing over 8 feet before he is 18, experiencing the frustrations of clothes, movement, fatigue, and isolation. Peggy comes by after work each day to sit with him and his teenage friends, watching him interact with them, growing closer and closer to him in her mind. She never reveals her feelings to James as he gives no indication that he looks on her as anything other than a friend to talk with who brings him books and sits with him.
Peggy shares many hours talking or just sitting with and observing James, alone with her thoughts but comfortable in the presence of a great friend. Author McCracken is highly skilled in gradually, patiently unveiling the minds of these lovely, sensitive characters. What goes on in the mind and daily life of a giant? Or in the mind of a spinster librarian for that matter? Their conversations and the gentle exposure of each of their lives are the heart and soul of the book.
The Giant's House is full of joy and sadness, passion and isolation, hope and resignation, as two uniquely singular people meet and interact for whatever time they have. Together they share one thought. As Peggy states:
Nowadays, trendy librarians, wanting to be important, say, Knowledge is power, I know better.
Knowledge is love.
Happy reading.
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
McCracken, Elizabeth. Niagara Falls All Over Again
The fictional life of Mose Sharp describing his years as the straight man in a successful comedy act that spanned Vaudeville, film and television years. His life, travels, friends, women, and confirmed bachelorhood present a fascinating, compassionate portrait of a man and his era.
Ogawa, Yoko. The Housekeeper and the Professor
A simple woman and her young son take on the role of housekeeper for an elderly, crotchety ex-professor of mathematics. The communication between these two, while sparing, slowly grows and each realizes the value of the other and their own important role in.the other's life. (Previously reviewed here)
