Big Girl Small

by Rachel DeWoskin

The Boston Globe loved this book, which follows or perhaps responds to Anita Shreve’s Testimony in recounting the aftermath of a hookup sex tape at an elite private school. Where Testimony was told from many points of view (and had limited sympathy with the one girl in the tape), Big Girl Small is very much focused on the girl, who here happens to be a dwarf. Big Girl Small seems to forget that love is real and that sex is sometimes nice. In making the heroine a Little Person, we veer into the hazards of allegory on the one hand and the Problem Play on the other, and these seem unnecessary hazards. Armistead Maupin’s Maybe The Moon. DeWoskin’s real interest is neither in sex tapes nor little people but rather in the friendships that join young women, and she draws these with flair and precision.