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 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8403 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The subtitle of Edwards's Twain-indebted debut, written over the course of 30 years, might be "A California Yankee in Doctor Freud's Court." Following a physical assault, Stan "Wheeler" Burden is precipitated into the past-1897 Vienna, to be exact-from 1988 San Francisco. Wheeler has been a teenage baseball star and famed rock 'n' roller, but he's dreamed of Vienna since his prep school days, where his teacher, Arnauld Esterhazy, instilled a love of the city's gilded paradoxes. Vienna of 1897 is indeed hopping: Freud is discovering the Oedipus complex, Mahler is conducting his symphonies, and the mayor, Karl Lueger, is inventing modern, populist anti-Semitism-which the young Hitler will soon internalize. Making this a true oedipal drama, Wheeler's father and grandparents come to town, too, all at different ages, and with very different agendas. Edwards has great fun with time travel paradoxes and anachronisms, but the real romance in this book is with the period, topped by nostalgia for the old-school American elite, as represented by the we-all-went-to-the-same-prep-school Burdens. This novel ends up a sweet, wistful elegy to the fantastic promise and failed hopes of the 20th century.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Ron Charles

[...] When California rock legend Wheeler Burden wakes up in 1897 Vienna -- 50 years before his own birth -- he has no idea how he got there or how he'll get back, but he recognizes the city from the stories told by his favorite prep school teacher. [...]

What's weirdest about this weird story is how straight-faced Edwards plays it. As The Little Book jumps back and forth in time, everything here signals the wackiness of John Irving or John Barth, but Edwards moves through his chronology-scrambled fantasy with such earnestness and nostalgia that he smothers its potential comedy.

That problem is particularly egregious in the chapters at the St. Gregory's School in Boston, where Wheeler spends his teen years. There we meet his prep school mentor, Arnauld Esterhazy, nicknamed "the Venerable Haze," who's taught history for more than 40 years. Edwards, who went to a Boston prep school himself and later worked for several private schools, suggests in an author's note that these scenes stem from beloved memories, but that lack of emotional distance leaves no room for irony. The narrator lavishes all kinds of apparently sincere praise upon the Venerable Haze, but to me he sounds like Miss Jean Brodie in drag. Haze refers to his student devotees as his "Jung Wien." When he first meets Wheeler, he says, "We have much to learn from you, Herr Burden, as we begin writing on your tabula rasa." He prattles on about Vienna during its "time of delusive splendor." He frequently reads passages about the city "with great reverence" from "his prized source, the 'Little Book,' " and then asks the kids, "Isn't that writing absolutely exquisite?" This sounds satirical, but it's not meant to be. Edwards claims that "over the years his Jung Wien, sophisticated private school boys who could be cynical about so much in their lives, rarely directed any of their derision at the 'Little Book.' " We never hear anything from this book ourselves, but we're told again and again how great it is.

In fact, Edwards makes so many hyperbolic claims that The Little Book begins to sound rather flat, like a tall tale told without a wink. Edwards can't stop petting Wheeler and reminding us how wonderful he is. Of course, he's incredibly good looking and sexually athletic, but he also writes a foundational work of 20th-century philosophy and inspires "the beginning of the American feminist movement." (You didn't think women could do that on their own, did you?) And he throws the fastest pitch in college baseball (at Harvard, naturally). Then he writes "the most famous song of the 1970s" and becomes "one of People magazine's Most Recognizable." Then he publishes a bestselling book in the 1980s. The whole narrative is soggy with hero-worship, like the fantasy of a skinny teenage boy staring into a mirror.

Edwards does far better describing the coffeehaus culture of prewar Vienna in all its beauty, political agitation and rising anti-Semitism. Some of the historical figures here during the fin de siècle make nice cameos, too, such as Gustav Mahler and Mark Twain. After Wheeler pops into the late 19th century, he supports himself in Vienna by telling the story of his life to a young doctor named Sigmund Freud, who's convinced this strange man is seriously delusional. Their discussions provide an interesting snapshot of Freud's work in progress, but, unfortunately, the doctor never springs to life, largely because Edwards won't allow anyone to upstage Wheeler. Even the founder of modern psychology must take pointers from this brilliant rock-star time-traveler.

In the end we learn that Wheeler's family is responsible for just about every major event in the 20th century. Including the Frisbee. But we never know why or why their "lives weave together in a fatal and continuous and repeating loop." [...]

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“Selden Edwards’s impressive debut novel is richly inventive, woven tightly with incident, and fully engaging. It is also superbly humane and readable”
—Richard Ford

”Selden Edwards’s The Little Book is a wonderful novel and I think it has a chance to become a famous one. I’ve never read a novel like it. And I felt like my life was changing forever as I savored its many delights and mysteries.”
—Pat Conroy

The Little Book is named as one of “two first-time novelists I’m looking forward to becoming acquainted with,” in a list by Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and the recent People of the Book in the Wall Street Journal Weekend

“A major BEA galley to grab… This novel ends up a sweet, wistful elegy to the fantastic promise and failed hopes of the 20th century.”
—Publishers Weekly

"A work that feels effortless... Part mystery, part meditation on the marriage of past and present, part love letter to a bygone era, the novel moves fluidly through time and place, belying its three- decade creation."
—Playboy Magazine

“Not every summer volume is a throwaway beach book, quickly skimmed and quickly forgotten. Herewith, promising, (mostly) substantive reads… Written over 30 years, Selden Edwards’s The Little Book (Dutton, August 14) dumps ’70s rock star Wheeler Burden in late 19th-century Vienna, where he tangles with Freud, Mahler, and growing anti-Semitism.”
—The Boston Phoenix

“If you like time travel, romance, and fin de siecle Vienna, this is your summer book. A San Francisco heir and philosopher suddenly finds himself in 1897 where he meets Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, and his own father.”
—From Marjorie Kehe’s summer book roundup in the Christian Science Monitor

“An ideal late summer reading getaway…. The Little Book is all about plot—that’s what makes it both an entertaining mental escape and a tough book to do justice to in a review….The Little Book is…a soaring thing of joy whose only purpose — and I mean this as a compliment — is to delight and entertain.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“As you might expect, The Little Book is anything but little. This is a wide-ranging novel of grand ideas, of the promise of the new century, now so far behind us. It is a story of fathers and sons, to be sure, of the bygone days when an American aristocracy held the reins of power. And it is a tale of books within books, and their influence upon history. But Edwards has a wonderfully subversive way with all this; along with the great men of the era, he creates astonishing female characters. The Burden women, who marry into the family after living rich, full lives of their own, have their tales to tell, too. All this swirls around in a graceful waltz of a book, spinning at times at dizzying speed, but leaving behind a haunting, unforgettable melody.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune

“The Little Book is presented with undeniable brio. Enthusiasts of Vienna and narratives of time travel are in for a thrilling adventure.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Take a pinch of Mitch Albom's For One More Day and The Five People You Meet in Heaven (for an impossible chance to make amends or peace), draw a little from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (for the potential of a twist on the physical universe as we know it), on the upscale side borrow a bit from Michael Cunningham's The Hours (for clever paralleling of extremely different contexts), hark back to E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (for commingling historical and fictional characters) and throw in a heady dollop of romantic mooning a la Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County, and you will have an inkling of the ingredients pulped together in The Little Book.
—Chicago Tribune

“The Little Book is quite the twisty not-so-little novel. Everything is connected, we are told in The Little Book, and indeed it is in this tale. Caught up in an eternal loop, as well, though the book does come to a tender close, but only to start up again in the mind's eye. It's hard not to be thoroughly taken with such an approach to both the real and imagined past.”
—New York Daily News Sunday

“B+. Back to the Future for the intellectual set.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“One of “Ten Things We Love This Week”
—Entertainment Weekly’s ‘Must List’, August 15, 2008

“The Little Book shows the rich imagination and the intellectual fire of the first-time author… It would not be surprising to see this book become a classic.”
—Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

“Edwards has been working on `The Little Book' since 1974, and it shows. He's created a complete world, one that's a pleasure to enter.” —Bloomberg News

“The Little Book is unlike any novel I have read. In its historical scope it resembles Anthony Powell’s wonderful series A Dance to the Music of Time, but with the introduction of the fantastic, through the device of time travel, and myth, through the arts and psychology, it delivers a very different and rather more modern experience. With so many volumes published in such a wide variety of styles today, it’s hard to tell if any new book will survive for even a year, never mind gain literary immortality. But this novel, rooted in the work of more than 30 years, has as good a chance as any in recent memory of withstanding the test of time and becoming a classic.”
–Santa Barbara Independent

Customer Reviews

Must Read - a personal adventure
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
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

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 the only celebrated historian to come across the path of this rock legend. We meet Winston Churchill, a young Hitler, Mark Twain, and Egon Wickstein a philosopher reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Curiosity strikes this wonder man as to how he slipped through the streams of time.

But the tale gets even stranger when Wheeler bumps into his deceased father, Dilly. Reality is getting stranger and stranger as the tale moves forward. Wheeler isn't sure how he got here and isn't sure how long he'll stay. The book shares characteristics with Forrest Gump (the cultural miss mashing) and The Twilight Zone, but manages to be completely original. If I was going to knock the book, it could only be that the format doesn't move you like Forrest Gump did. Or shock and awe you the way Twilight Zone did, but that is minor and I had to stretch to find those flaws. This is going to become an instant literary classic and one you don't want to miss.