Carey...presents a creative epic that follows a poor orphan’s rise to become the famous Madame Tussaud. Born in 1761, and nicknamed 'Little' for her petite size, Marie Grosholtz becomes the unpaid apprentice of her late mother’s odd, nervous employer, Dr. Curtius...Their skills with wax attract attention, leading to their unusual museum and Marie’s invitation to tutor Princess Elisabeth at Versailles ... The oddball characters and gothic eccentricities evoke Tim Burton’s work but without any fantastical elements; the reality is sufficiently strange on its own ... The unique perspective, witty narrative voice, and clever illustrations make for an irresistible read.
Marie’s is a morbid tale, one that belongs—like James’s The Turn of the Screw—in the uncanny aisle of the horror supermarket. Carey has an eye for the ominous ... Each page leaves you off kilter. Each chapter a little breathless. For some readers of scary novels, Little may be a tad too whimsical. It is decidedly PG-rated. Although there is not a whole lot of white-knuckle terror happening, Marie’s life is nonetheless a grueling fight against adversity. And while it may leave die-hard horror fans wanting more frightening fare, the soft scare may be a good thing for those readers who prefer to read before bed and sleep without nightmares.
I admit, I’m growing tired of novels—even good ones—that turn historical figures into fictional characters ... I say this simply to underline how powerfully this book, an imagined life of Madame Tussaud, performed in winning me over ... This is a book so dense with events and so vibrant with delight in language that it’s difficult to do it justice. Suffice it to say that Carey, in the disarmingly engaging voice of his heroine, can make even a list of wax-working tools seem charmed.
I marvel at the achievement of this book, even as I regret it. I didn't want this to be about Madame Tussaud; I didn't want the character of Marie, whom I loved as a fantasy, to resolve into a woman who really existed, who has written her own memoirs in her own voice that isn't Little's. I loved this book best when it showed me, with its stylized dialogue, its garroting commas, its punctuating illustrations, history as an art form, history as an argument. I loved it less when the Revolution began in earnest, and Marie's narrative began to be swallowed into the gravity well of history as facts, history as a litany of horrors somehow less moving than the Widow Picot's obsessive cruelty, Curtius' oblivious neglect, the monstrosity and tenderness of Versailles ... Little isn't about history either; it's about humans, and bodies, and art, and loneliness, and it's deeply, painfully sad. I could talk about it forever.
... marvelous, weird, and vividly imagined ... One of the pleasures of gothic is how it abuses us for our hope — making it perhaps the most current of all the genres now. Carey plays these roller-coasters of emotion masterfully ... If there’s any criticism one can apply to Little, it’s that it keeps its heroine little for too long. Marie lived to be nearly 90, but 90 percent of this book takes place in the early stages of her life ... Still, this is a fantastic winter tale, a big, patient read full of reversals of fortune and fabulous glimpses of a time not unlike our own...
... rich, engrossing ... Occasionally, Carey loses faith in the extraordinary potency of his material, making insights that arise of their own accord (the equalising nature of waxworks, for instance) too explicit and neat. Some characters are less complex than they could be. But at its best this is a visceral, vivid and moving novel about finding and honouring one’s talent; about searching out where one belongs and who one loves, however strange and politically fraught the result might be.
It might not be so wrong to review Edward Carey’s new novel, Little, with the simple declaration that it is exceptionally good ... If [the book's premise] seems dark, it’s because it is. But Carey portrays Marie as one of the most ambitious characters you will ever meet ... An irresistible tale, Little will please all readers, especially those who love period adventures and old-fashioned stories of triumph over human folly.
Little is quirky, eccentric, offbeat, Gothic and all the other descriptives fondly applied to Carey's peculiarly elegant prose. Yes, there's history, and artistic license taken with it — but this is Carey, so a certain amount of embellished creepiness is part of the game ... With Little, Carey transforms the incredible tales that Marie told about herself into a chiaroscuro portrait every bit as haunting, and as seemingly true, as the likenesses she created ... Thanks to Edward Carey's gift for celebrating the bizarre, Madame Tussaud's story is at last in the right hands.
Dark and delightful, playful and peculiar, Little is Edward Carey's absorbing, fictional re-creation of Madame Tussaud's early life ... Carey's spirited style brings a lightness to Marie's bleak days and a whimsy to her brighter ones. He blends dark humor with a puckish tone for a story that's simply magnetic ... Even when there's a foreboding atmosphere, his words seem to dance on the page ... Little is big in many ways: creativity, energy, concept and character. Leave plenty of room in your heart for this one; you'll need it.
... one of the most original historical novels of the year ... By turns macabre, funny, touching and oddly life-affirming, Little is a remarkable achievement.
[Little is] full of wonderfully imagined fictional characters, from the vindictive widow to the feral boy who lands on their doorstep to the widow’s son who breaks Little’s heart only to heal it again. The novel is almost Dickensian in its scope and its ability to portray the grotesqueness of human lives. Furthermore, it’s whimsically illustrated by Carey’s own pencil sketches ... Readers will find themselves captivated by this new perspective on the Revolutionary period in France and the remarkable story of one of its most fascinating characters.
... gruesomely entertaining ... This rousing, macabre novel showcases a sensibility that falls somewhere between Les Misérables and the works of Edward Gorey ... The novel proceeds from oddity to oddity, continually scaling new ramparts of strangeness. Sometimes Carey goes too far – the book could have done with less about a haunted former monkey house. But gradually, Little’s peculiar tale morphs from the plaintively personal to the political ... With Little, Carey has created a fantastic world in which wax models do indeed bridge the gap between life and death,the present and the past. But reader beware: While this galloping, determinedly outlandish novel may enhance what you already know about the French Revolution, don’t expect a history lesson.
....Marie’s widowed mother dies soon after taking a job as housekeeper to Doctor Curtius, a physician who makes wax models of organs and body parts. Little Marie moves to Paris with Curtius, where he opens a wax museum and trains her as his assistant. There, they sculpt first the heads of philosophes, then famous murderers, and eventually victims of the guillotine ... In Carey’s hands, life blurs with death, nature with artifice; his objects seem as animated as people while his people can appear as fragile and impotent as objects ... A quirky, compelling story that deepens into a meditation on mortality and art.
Plunging into the macabre chaos of 18th-century Europe in this exquisite novel, Carey conjures the life of the girl who would become Madame Tussaud. Orphaned at seven, 'Little'...finds herself in servitude to Doctor Curtius, an emaciated recluse who fashions body parts from wax for medical research. He teaches the clever Marie his trade—which she quickly learns ... 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...world that churns with vitality, especially his 'Little,' a female Candide at once surreal and full of heart.
