Little Giant of Aberdeen County (Tiffany Baker)

In a small town, you have just one of each: One teacher, one doctor (whose father and grandfather were the town doctors before him), one most amazing high school beauty queen and one giant. That makes small towns wonderful places to set a certain kind of well organized novel, where everyone is special and love and hate last a lifetime – especially if they are unfulfilled.

The town giant, a girl who grows too fast and continues growing as a woman, tells the story of her life – interwoven the rest of the slightly strange small town people but also always slightly set apart, because that’s the way the world works: If you look strange, you become a freak, the world will make you a freak, no matter what your personality is.

One reviewer likened Tiffany Baker’s style to John Irving’s, but I find it much warmer. Maybe because we see the world through the eyes of the giant, instead of staring at her through the eyes of the author.