Product DescriptionAn 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 siècle 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, legend’s 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 is—still his modern self—wandering in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: fin de siècle Vienna. It is 1897, precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.
It’s 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 Wheeler’s 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 family’s 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.
What Others Say
Edwards is obviously a talented writer with a knack for history, art, philosophy and even baseball
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 ... Read More
Instant classic
This being Selden Edwards first book there isn't much to fall back on, but don't let that sway your decision to read this instant literary classic. I wouldn't say that about just any book and The Little Book is certainly a strange tale for that title, but a truly Wonkaesque story it is. Strange and unbelievable were the first words that came to mind. The protagonist is Frank Standish Burden III (Wheeler), a self-proclaimed every's man who manages to travel back in time using a Delor....I mean....(a little joke)....and meets some very interesting people who are not yet at the pinnacle of their careers.
Starting with the still relatively unknown Sigmund Freud who dismisses Wheeler's time-traveling tale as a delusional episode. But that isn't ... Read More
The circle of life
I love time travel books, so I ordered this one right away. After I finished it I went to Amazon to see what other people thought. It is a very different time travel book, an odd romance, and a nice history lesson. Judging by readers' ratings, people are all over the map in their opinions. And, so am I. I have so many questions about what happened, but with time travel stories you have to accept that it might be confusing. After reading the author's afterwords and acknowledgments, I have decided that he is a total egomaniac. And.....actually so are Wheeler and Dilly...
Eine kleine mess!
I am a historical novel junkie, especially ones that include time travel (see Allen Appel, Jack Finney, etc.). I have visited Vienna, my grandfather was Austrian, and I dig Secessionism and anything having to do with fin de siecle Europe. That said, I was very disappointed with The Little Book, especially when reading how it took 35 years to write. Oh, what a tangled, stilted, unintentionally funny story! The characters are wooden at best, they bob along like the marionettes at Schönbrunn Palace from one chapter to another. Despite all the Freudian discussions (yawn) of the Oedipus complex and sex, which provides the outline of the story, the actual intimate encounters are only coyly suggested by "sudden releases" and much clothing adjustment, as if the ... Read More
Have you ever walked down the street, lost in thought?
...and then looked around wondering how you got there? That is what happened to Wheeler Burden on afternoon, only instead of being somewhere in San Francisco he realizes that he is in Vienna and that the year is 1897, not the 1988 he had woken up in that morning. Even though Wheeler had never been to Vienna before the city was not unfamiliar, it had figured in his life and that of his family for years - his favorite prep school teacher and mentor had been born there and spoke of it often, his father had traveled there as a young man, as had his father before him. Wheeler was able to cope with his new environment but each time he begins to adjust to his new circumstances something else happens to further alter his reality.
