Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm)'s Reviews > Little

A fictionalized retelling of Madame Tussaud, known for her wax figures of famous (and infamous) persons, sprinkled with grim illustrations and wry observations. Carey initially hooks his audience with the amusing, macabre first-person voice of young Madame Tussaud, christened Anne Marie Grosholtz at birth. The early years of her life - filled with sorrow, gore and intrigue - are easily the best chapters of the book.

However, the narrative really slows down around the midpoint and, shifting into the turbulent years of the French Revolution, slogs toward a conclusion that seems as if it will never come. Little is particularly gruesome in its final chapters.

Woeful, ghastly, and cumbersome, Little will delight some and disturb others.

We were ushered into a crowded bedroom. The crowd parted, revealing a man upon the bed, naked save for an old dressing gown, a sort of white turban wrapped around his head. The face was moon-shaped and very pitted, the large eyelids were not quite closed, the wide mouth was open, the tongue sticking out a little of a corner, the skin was diseased, sores, scabs, broken wheals. There was a great hole in the chest, a deep, dark mouth; you could see right down its throat. The man had begun to congeal; the liquids inside had steadied and started their darkening.