The Little Book

The Little Book is not really little, but it’s about the making of a “little book” about Vienna and the focal point of this circuitous tale about family, psychology and history. Edwards upends our notions about all three. He creates and recreates a cast of interesting characters - the domineering father, the heroic son and the rebellious grandson. Cameos by historical figures like Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler and a young Adolf Hitler provide interesting but neccessary diversions. Time itself is almost a character in the novel and Edwards moves back and forth between time periods with ease. This is a fascinating story not to be raced through, but contemplated. It’s not your average time-travel book and that’s part of the joy of show more this novel. Edwards like his character, Wheeler Burden, never does what you might expect him to do. show less

I’m a sucker for time travel novels going all the way back to Jack Finney’s classic “Time and Again”. They’re tricky to do but when they work, wow! Selden Edward’s debut historical works. Wheeler Burden, resident in San Francisco in 1988, suddenly finds himself strolling Vienna’s Ringstrasse in 1897. Why and how he has come to be there is the crux of a fascinating story beautifully conceived and executed. Without getting into spoilers, I’ll say only that Wheeler’s relationship with his late father is particularly moving. Edwards worked on this story for thirty years; I’m hoping selfishly that his next book will be here sooner and be every bit as good.

The Little Book has a whole lot of history, a little romance, and some moments of pure beauty. Edwards cleverly weaves real people with hefty significance into Wheeler’s story, and he successfully imagines his characters into the historic events of 1897 Vienna with skill and style. This is a sprawling story that in some ways reminded me of John Irving’s books, but I think it could have been tightened up just a bit. Edwards’s writing is strong and well-paced, and he’s telling a tale that is certainly fun to read if a little slow at times.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog.

Wheeler Burden, an exiled member of the famous old Boston Burden family, grew up in San Francisco on a farm with his Jewish mother. His father, a living legend at the schools he went to and during the war, where he was captured by the Nazis while working with the French resistance, but died being tortured to death for information he would not give them. His grandfather Burden is a hard anti-Semite and therefore, Wheeler's mom had nothing to do with him. His grandmother, on the other hand is a sweet and wonderful woman that he gets to know once his grandfather dies and his mother agrees to send him to St. Gregory's private school, where the Burdens had gone to and like his father, he makes his mark there in baseball and academics. One of show more the professors, known as Hage teaches certain students about his time in Austria before the turn of the century, when everything was perfect. He takes Wheeler under his wing, as he did his father before him.

Wheeler grows up to be a rock musician who was at Woodstock and got stabbed at Altamont. In the mid-seventies he gave it all up for seemingly no reason. Around this time he inherits the work of his professor and sets about to make it into a book. This takes about fifteen years of hard work and it becomes a hit. When he is walking home from a book signing in the mid-eighties, he suddenly finds himself in a strangely familiar place. It is 1897 in the fin de siècle Vienna. He has no idea how he got here, but he quickly steals a suit and some money from an American.

In this amazing city, the cultural center of Europe, he meets famous thinkers and creators of the time in the coffee houses, he goes and visits Freud, before he becomes famous and has just come up with his Oedipus Complex. He tries to help Freud make his theories more clear and understandable. His mother was part of a group that helped Freud escape to London during the war and they spent lots of time trying to decipher Freud's work.

He also meets the love of his life, a girl named Emily James from Amherst, Massachusesttes. When they kiss for the first time, she becomes frightened of her feelings for him and disappears for a while. Then he finds out she is his grandmother Burden. But she isn't the only one he meets. His father appears as well. On the real time line, he has just been tortured by the Nazis and left for dead and in his last moments of life he thinks of this place that the Hage told him about and then he is there. His father, Dilly, tells him a few family secrets and how important his grandmother will be in the future and how he must not interfere with her marrying Burden, who is also in Vienna.

Wheeler finds it hard to let her go and in the end, the decision is made for him. But he is grateful to have gotten a chance to meet and get to know the mythical father who is now shown to be quite human and to fall in love with one of the most wonderful women of the century. He keeps a diary that comes back to haunt him in a way and passes through many hands, until Wheeler's mother gets it at the end of the book.

This was a fabulous book that really made you feel you were in the Ringstrasse in Vienna, a time of great political turmoil, where the rise of anti-Semitism is predicting the future of the 400,000 Jews in the city at that time, that will diminish to 124 after World War II. Mahler is there directing the symphony to Wagner in amazing ways, right before he becomes famous. Famous artists and thinkers of that time are there and you can really feel yourself there. I knew little about Austria before reading this book, but now I feel like I have lived there at the height of its existence. This is a tremendously good book written over the course of forty years by the author who started it in college as a short paper and then over the years added more and more as information became available about that special place in time. It was well worth the wait and I hope to find more books from this author without the long wait. show less

Wheeler Burden is a lot of things:

• son of a revered athlete and war hero


• a successful - if not ambitious - high school and college baseball pitcher


• a rock & roll superstar


• heir to a mentor's collection of writings about fin-de-siecle Vienna which he publishes into a book


• a time traveler

I do love a time travel adventure and this is a pretty good one as the protagonist Burden suddenly arrives in Vienna in 1898. Armed with the knowledge provided by his teacher "the venerable Haze" he successfully navigates a time half-a-century before his birth and becomes acquainted with the intellectual socialites of the time. More surprisingly he meets quite a few people he already knows. The novel jumps between Burden's story in Vienna and biographical show more stories of three generations of the Burden family. Along the way, Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Buddy Holly among others play a part.

It's not a perfect book as Edwards' dialogue and characterization is kind of week, and there's no end to the superlatives he lays on the characters we're supposed to like. But there's enough of a cracking adventure to make it worth a read. File it under higher-level brain candy. show less

Time travel fiction is not an easy undertaking and the time the author took, 30 year to be exact, can be seen in this well written piece of fiction that can have you believe in the plausibility of time travel and the thin line one must tread or bear the consequences of the change that can ensue. The characters created are three dimensional to the depths of the secrets that are revealed through out the intertwining story of Wheeler Burden and his legendary father Dilly Burden. Wheeler finds himself in Vienna, Austria of the late 1890's at the cusp of a cultural apex of music, philosophy of which he must find an immediate way to fit in to the times. He runs into his father Dilly, his grandfather Frank, his grandmother Weezie as well as show more his mentor "the Haze". I also enjoyed the mythology and psychoanalysis that is weaved in with his visits to Sigmund Freud that are used to hold Wheeler's character together as he tries to determine why Vienna. I can see why Pat Conroy felt this was a must read and astounding piece of fiction. Looking forward to reading the authors next book The Lost Prince. show less

Well written and cleverly plotted, this book will keep you reading and guessing throughout. Wheeler Burden, the main character, a rock star, intellectual, and celebrity of the 1980's, finds himself in Vienna in 1897 - a place he is familiar with through various family stories and connections through the ages. That these connections all start to play out around him is an understatement. Intricately plotted, the book often seems in danger of collapsing under its own weight - but it does not. And in that tension is much of its charm. If you like historical fiction with a smidgen of fantasy thrown in, this is an enjoyable read, to be sure.