The Giant's House [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Elizabeth McCracken (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

The year is 1950 and, at 26, librarian Peggy Cort feels as though love and life have passed her by. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt, the "over-tall" 11-year-old who's the talk of the town, walks into the library and changes her life forever. A 1996 "New York Times" Notable Book.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An unlikely love story about a lonely spinster librarian and a younger man, forced into loneliness because of his monstrous size. Peggy Cort, the reclusive librarian in a small Cape Cod town falls for a boy 14 years her junior -- one who grows to be 8 feet 7 inches and 415 pounds. Though initially attracted out of sympathy, Peggy soon finds she has much in common with this sensitive, albeit enormous man. A romance ensues, but the unique connectedness they share -- something neither has ever felt before -- is cruelly interrupted by tragedy.

From Publishers Weekly

A platonic, decorous and achingly poignant love affair between a young man who suffers from gigantism and a librarian who is 14 years his senior is the focus of this remarkable debut novel. McCracken is not merely a born raconteur; she is also an assured stylist and an astute student of human nature. Narrator Peggy Cort, spinster librarian in a small town on Cape Cod, first becomes aware of James Sweatt when he comes into the library with his grade-school class. At age 11, James is already 6'2" and destined to keep growing. Peggy finds herself drawn to the gentle, lonely young man, both because he fills a void in her own life and because she is in effect adopted by James's loving but eccentric family. The reader is mesmerized by this low-key narrative, first lured by Peggy's alternately acerbic and tender voice, then captivated by James's situation and intrigued by his family, later engulfed by pathos as James's body begins to fail and, finally, amazed by a turn of events that ends the novel with a major surprise. McCracken also invests the narrative with humor, sometimes through Peggy's astringent comments and more often through the use of minor characters who add vivid color and their own distinctive voices. One thinks of Anne Tyler's Illumination Night as the closest comparison to this brilliantly imagined chronicle of a peculiar, unique relationship. And like Tyler, McCracken (who also wrote the well-reviewed short-story collection Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry), shows herself a wise and compassionate reader of the human heart. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 465 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Pr (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786208910
• ISBN-13: 978-0786208913
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,369,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great characters; beautiful language; unforgettable read, March 2, 2001

By 

M. Turpin (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Giant's House: A Romance (Paperback)

M. Turpin

This 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 existence. A Giant's House is full of profound, seemingly casual reflections on the nature of love, and Mr. Sweat, who abandoned his son in childhood, and thus describes himself ruefully as " the opposite of an orphan," tells us about himself: "[P]eople become immune to love the way they become immune to any disease. Either they had it bad early in life, like chicken pox, and that's that; or they keep getting exposed to it in little doses and build up an immunity; or somehow they just don't catch it, something in `em is born resistant. I'm the last type. I'm immune to love and poison ivy."

McCracken is a writer to watch - she surely deserved to be named by Granta as one of the 20 Best Young American Novelists, and this book heartily merited its nomination for the National Book Award.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, intelligent, romantic. Please read this book., August 27, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Giant's House (Hardcover)

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.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Giant's House captures the beauty of romance, January 11, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Giant's House (Hardcover)

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.