The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt — the “over-tall” eleven-year-old boy who’s the talk of the town — walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for … friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined in ways that neither one could have predicted. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who’s ever really understood her, and as he grows — six foot five at age twelve, then seven feet, then eight — so does her heart and their most singular romance.
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What an absolutely beautiful book…absolutely recommend
The prose and craft of the story was excellent and would have earned 5 stars on their own. It was the content of the story that knocked it down to three. I’ll preface this by saying I am a romantic reader, meaning I want to see the characters change over the course of the book, for the better. Books that do an in-depth examination of people who …
Award-winning Elizabeth McCracken’s Giant’s House is stunningly original. James Carlson Sweatt suffers from giantism. Peggy Cort is the spinster librarian who begins recommending special books to this young man who towers above his classmates. Symbolism: James, grown too large to fit into his world, fascinated by books on magic, wanting to escape …
This book is a surprise. The author lures the reader into her fairy tale. The characters are endearing. The story is sweet. It is a perfect rainy weekend book that ends with a wistful smil on the reader. Well done.
I liked the human flaws and how they are viewed by others. We all have flaws; some more visible than others. Sensitive, empathetic, relevant.
Loved it!
Exquisitely written.
Peggy was as small of heart as James was large of body–when the two became intertwined, the relationship changed them both. James was imprisoned in a body ravaged by a rare disorder that made him gigantic, but his love for people and his insatiable desire to soak up knowledge about everything possible also made him popular among his peers. His …
Unusual story with sympathetic characters. Held my interest to the end.