Dubi reviewed The little giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Review of 'The little giant of Aberdeen County' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book baffled me. I was three quarters of the way in before I managed to put into words what I thought the book was about, but then it turned into a tragedy, in the Greek sense, and I was no longer sure. Then came the epilogue, which felt tacked on and didn't really fit in either.
Truly is born a giant baby, and never really stops growing. But she is born in a little town that never changes - where for five generations the town doctor has been Robert Morgan, who always had a boy named Robert who would grow up to be the next Doctor Robert Morgan, and for generations there has been one family who lived in poverty in a farmhouse and were always down on their luck; where for God knows how many years the same woman was the teacher in the single-class schoolhouse (and I …
This book baffled me. I was three quarters of the way in before I managed to put into words what I thought the book was about, but then it turned into a tragedy, in the Greek sense, and I was no longer sure. Then came the epilogue, which felt tacked on and didn't really fit in either.
Truly is born a giant baby, and never really stops growing. But she is born in a little town that never changes - where for five generations the town doctor has been Robert Morgan, who always had a boy named Robert who would grow up to be the next Doctor Robert Morgan, and for generations there has been one family who lived in poverty in a farmhouse and were always down on their luck; where for God knows how many years the same woman was the teacher in the single-class schoolhouse (and I do mean God knows, because I'll be damned if I could follow the timeline for this book, it often made no sense to me at all). But then Truly is born, and things start to change, and the town fights against these changes because change is against everything they believe in.
So this is a book about tradition and change and how the two collide, and how this isn't always a good thing. But sometimes it is. But sometimes it really isn't. Without giving out too much of the plot, let us just say that this book gives a very mixed message about whether or not change is good, and the feeble attempts to give a happy ending in the epilogue is just... no.
Throughout most of the book I thought it would make a beautiful animated film - a manga, maybe. I still think it might. It has qualities that speak to the sensibilities of that genre. The book is certainly enjoyable, in a somber, depressing way, but I couldn't help but feel that part of the reason I couldn't figure out what the book was about was because the author didn't really know what she wanted to say all along, either.
Still, YMMV.