The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

By Tiffany Baker (368 pages)

Grand Central Publishing

Bookish rating: 4

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County has the lucky-duck honor of being the first book reviewed on Bookish and of being the Reader’s Ink book club choice for December.

I feel like I’ve sort of talked this book to death already, as we’ve been discussing online, but the first book is the first book, and this is the first book. I’m a stickler. Live with it.

Truly (the name of our heroine, not an adverb) is a giant, though how big we never really learn. She has a super pretty sister, Serena Jane, who in contrast makes Truly seem even butt-uglier. The townsfolk just sort of pity her and the fact she has to wear ugly clothes (which--I won't lie--I too would pity), while the local doctor maniuplates her. We follow Truly through several decades of (literal) growth, until finally her spunk and power matches her heft.  

Baker creates a lovable, complex, and slyly humorous character in Truly, and she writes beautifully. One weird thing: The narration is done via first-person omniscient.* I’m undecided as to whether it worked. In some ways it did work, perhaps due to Truly’s slight mysticism. At the same time, Truly’s knowledge of what everybody else is thinking causes problems . . . how did she not know of the secrets kept from her? Eh? On the whole, though, the reader can easily forgive this. At least Baker got a little ballsy with her character’s point of view.

Overall, the tone of the book, which I suppose is Truly’s voice, is resigned but in a fiery sort of way. Fiery resignation, if you will. (Sound paradoxical? Just wait. I've got a list of paradoxes coming up.) The resignation takes away from the immediacy of what little action there is, which can make for slow reading, but it also simultaneously suggests a heavy-footed plodding forward, like a big, big woman moving. In that sense, we really do get a strange sense of Truly’s girth.

Lots of big themes occur and Baker (or Truly?) seems to have trouble wrangling them all into one book. The novel lacked the direction I usually need to effortlessly read through a book. The writing is very good but not so amazing that I could accept and enjoy the lack of action; it needed more oomph to propel me forward, without running smack into Yet Another Theme or Issue (e.g., euthanasia, homosexuality, beauty, rape, Vietnam). Finding such balance is part of what makes literary fiction so stinkin’ tricky. Baker handles the (many) themes in non-cheesy, creative ways, always with Truly’s voice. But still.

My favorite part of the novel was how stuffed with paradoxes this story is. For starters, we have a "little" giant. Then Truly's heavy, earthy body-ness gets contrasted with her almost mystical powers (omniscient point of view, potions and poultices). And she grows when being starved for love, and shrinks when evil (the doctor) dies.

Overall, a solid, unique book. Recommended.

Note. *Chris requested a definition. First-person = "I"; omniscient = the character sees all and knows all. We are not limited to only what Truly would actually know. You can see why this combination would make for some challenging narration.