The reader of Edward Carey’s Little must have a tender heart and a strong stomach. You will weep, you will applaud, you will wonder if your nerves can take it, but most of all you will shudder. In this gloriously gruesome imagining of the girlhood of Marie Tussaud, mistress of wax, fleas will bite, rats will run and heads will roll and roll and roll. Guts’n’gore galore: I bloody loved it.
Carey, author of the children’s Iremonger Trilogy, tells his tale with gusto. If this is a fairy story then Marie is more Rumpelstiltskin than Rapunzel. Her nose is hooked, her chin pointed, her eyes short-sighted. Even in womanhood she is tiny. They don’t call her Little for nothing.
Little Marie with big dreams. Or should that be nightmares? The chapters on the Terror — the Conciergerie, the guillotine, the flies turning the streets black —are hard to wash off.
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