Big Fish

Starred review from September 28, 1998
"People mess things up, forget and remember all the wrong things. What's left is fiction," writes Wallace in his refreshing, original debut, which ignores the conventional retelling of the events and minutiae of a life and gets right to the poetry of a son's feelings for and memories of his father. William Bloom's father, Edward, is dying. He dies in fact in four different takes, all of which have William and his mother waiting outside a bedroom door as the family doctor tells them it's time to say their goodbyes. He intersperses the four takes with stories (all filtered through William's mind and voice) about the elusive Edward, who spent long periods of time on the road away from home and admitted once to his son that he had yearned to be a great man. The father and son deathbed conversations have son William playing earnest straight man, while his father is full of witticisms and jokes. In a plainspoken style dotted with transcendent passages, Wallace mixes the mundane and the mythical. His chapters have the transformative quality of fable and fairy tale, and the novel's roomy structure allows the mystery and lyricism of the story to coalesce. Agent, Joe Regal; author tour. (Oct.) FYI: Wallace is an illustrator who designs T-shirts, refrigerator magnets and greeting cards.

August 1, 1998
Small glimpses of the soul of another through the lattice of tall stories make up this charming first novel, which chronicles the seemingly charm-free topic of a son's wrestling with his father's dying. William Bloom's father, Edward, wasn't home much, but he made a life and a lot of money. In the long time his father takes to die, William tries desperately to find the man his father was inside the local legends that grew up around him. Most of the very brief chapters quickly launch themselves into myth and tall tale: Edward trying to leave Ashland, where he was born, and being caught in an almost-Ashland where broken dreams and broken fingers reside. Wallace notes that he wrote this novel in short spurts while caring for his small son and working in his own business, and oddly enough, the fantastical roots of everyday are visible here, as William searches for answers to such questions as, How do we reach the heart of another person? Readers who loved Martha Bergland's "Idle Curiosity" will love this one, too. ((Reviewed August 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)