The Little Book | 
 enlarge | Author: Selden Edwards
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $10.97
You Save: $14.98 (58%)
New (46) Used (21) Collectible (8) from $10.97
Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 19087
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0525950613
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780525950615
ASIN: 0525950613
Publication Date: August 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
An irresistible triumph of the imagination more than thirty years in the making, The Little Book is a breathtaking love story that spans generations, ranging from fin de siecle Vienna through the pivotal moments of the twentieth century.
The Little Book is the extraordinary tale of Wheeler Burden, California-exiled heir of the famous Boston banking Burdens, philosopher, student of history, legends son, rock idol, writer, lover of women, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero. In 1988 he is forty-seven, living in San Francisco. Suddenly he isstill his modern selfwandering in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: fin de siecle Vienna. It is 1897, precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.
Its not long before Wheeler has acquired appropriate clothes, money, lodging, a group of young Viennese intellectuals as friends, a mentor in Sigmund Freud, a bitter rival, a powerful crush on a luminous young American woman, a passing acquaintance with local celebrity Mark Twain, and an incredible and surprising insight into the dashing young war-hero father he never knew.
But the truth at the center of Wheelers dislocation in time remains a stubborn mystery that will take months of exploration and a lifetime of memories to unravel and that will, in the end, reveal nothing short of the eccentric Burden familys unrivaled impact on the very course of the coming century. The Little Book is a masterpiece of unequaled storytelling that announces Selden Edwards as one of the most dazzling, original, entertaining, and inventive novelists of our time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
 Very good read December 19, 2008
I started this book out slow, stopped in the first chapter and then picked it up again. Very happy I did, as I enjoyed it greatly. I thought the author put all the connections together perfectly. I recommend this book!
the connectedness of all things December 7, 2008
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The author's circle of connecting events and people facinated me. I look forward to more books from this talented writer.
An amazing fiction. December 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Little Book by Selden Edwards is one of the most engaging novels I have ever read, and I read around two novels per week. Immensely erudite, literate, and researched in minute detail, it is an education in the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as it morphed into Hitler's Germany, as much as it is also an intriguing love story, a psychological study of mankind's micro-and-macrocosms, and a science fiction story nonpareil. 33 years in the writing, it is a complex and convoluted tale that leaves us wondering about the very nature of reality and the afterlife. I can't recommend it enough for readers of literature.
Must Read - a personal adventure December 4, 2008
Much more than a fascinating story - there is something very personal about Edwards' writing that sets it apart and above. Those who let this "little book" inside will love it; those who choose not to, well, see their reviews.
Edwards is obviously a talented writer with a knack for history, art, philosophy and even baseball November 18, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Time travel is a tricky theme for writers to tackle. It's difficult to make the events and reactions feel real and natural, and to tie up all the loose ends of the plot. It's even harder to do all this and still explore other ideas in the story, giving the fantastic aspects a foundation and relatability. First-time novelist Selden Edwards's tale, THE LITTLE BOOK, presents readers with the story of an amazing family, two members of whom have become dislodged from linear time.
Beyond the incredible lives of three generations of the Burden family, Edwards paints a picture of Europe on the brink of a new age. In 1897 Vienna holds all the promise of a fully realized and splendid civilization. But, as history has shown, collapse and violence were on the horizon.
Wheeler Burden --- famous American college baseballl player, rock star and author --- suddenly finds himself in Vienna. It is the end of the 19th century, and the city is full of artists, philosophers and musicians. It is the time of Mahler, Klimt and Freud, and the youth of the city are part of a social, artistic and intellectual revolution. Because of his prep school mentor, Arnauld Esterhazy (known as The Haze), whose memoir he edited and published, Wheeler knows all about Vienna. He steals some clothes and money and sets off to see the city. But that theft leads to an incredible chain of events that plays out over almost the next 100 years and then circles in on itself starting all over again.
In Vienna, Wheeler comes to meet his war-hero father who died when he was just a small boy. The two, Wheeler and Dilly Burden, agree not to interfere in history (as Dilly has time traveled to Vienna as well), but Wheeler falls in love with the beautiful Bostonian writer Eleanor Putnam. The biggest problem with their affair is that she is his own grandmother.
This incest, though explained away by Edwards, is problematic. Wheeler and Eleanor are supposed to be having a monumental love affair, but the duality of their relationship is hard to get past. This is not the only flaw in Edwards's book. Full of big ideas and interesting characters, a blend of fantasy and historical fiction, THE LITTLE BOOK is often a victim of its own devices. The loops of time are occasionally confusing (which relationship came first: Wheeler and Eleanor as lovers, or as family?), the characters are more heroic and perfect than is realistic and their motivations are sometimes unclear. Whole sections of narration read like Freudian therapy sessions, which isn't surprising since Freud (along with Mahler, Hitler and other famous Austrians) is an important figure in the story. Edwards owes just as much to Joseph Campbell and his theories on the hero's journey as he does to Freud in telling this ambitious tale.
In the end, while much of what Edwards attempts in THE LITTLE BOOK is compelling, the main characters, especially Wheeler, seem to lack any real humanity: they are beautiful and talented, brilliant and influential, and, for some reason, stuck in a time warp moving from California in 1988 to Vienna in 1897, all using a set of books (who wrote what first and inspired by whom? It gets lost in the narrative shuffle) to navigate their way around.
Edwards is obviously a talented writer with a knack for history, art, philosophy and even baseball. Here he tackles not only time travel but also cultural change, anti-Semitism, the birth of psychoanalysis, modern European history, the perfect baseball pitch, the emergence of contemporary feminism and much more. Here's hoping that his next book will be published with a firm editorial hand.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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