Product description
FIRST ANNUAL REPS' CHOICE. Edward Bloom is dying, and his son William still doesn't know him. He knows some things about his father: Edward never missed school, even in the worst snowstorms. He could outrun anybody. He was generous. He had a way with animals. He knew every good joke ever told. He was a great salesman. A visionary. He saved lives. He knew how to court and win a woman. He was a good friend. He was an adulterer. These things William knows. But William realizes he still doesn't know his father: how he thinks, what is important to him--or who he really is. Sitting by his father's deathbed, William tries to understand the elusive Edward Bloom, the man quickly slipping from his grasp who is more interested in evading his son's questions than in answering them. In fact, Edward is most interested in running through his repertoire of classic jokes. This is his final performance, he's fading fast, and he's milking those last moments for all they're worth. Who can blame him for that? And so, as the son grows increasingly desperate to know the man about to step over permanently to the other side, he begins to make up stories. In a wonderful sleight of hand, William recreates his father's life in heroic proportions. William reconstructs Edward's life from beginning to end through a series of tales, legends, and myths; in doing so, he finds a way to understand his father's great feats and great failings, and he finds a way to say good-bye. With a mixture of humor and pathos, BIG FISH teaches us about the transformative powers of joke telling and storytelling, and one magical way of moving from life to death. Advance praise for BIG FISH: "A talented and fascinating writer. Daniel Wallace has created a jewel in BIG FISH."--Winston Groom, author of FORREST GUMP; "BIG FISH is going to make a very big splash! It's got everything: heart, wonderful writing, and accessibility . . . a very special novel which may well become a classic."--Lee Smith, author of NEWS OF THE SPIRIT.
In Big Fish, Daniel Wallace angles in search of a father and hooks instead a fictional debut as winning as any this year. From his son's standpoint, Edward Bloom leaves much to be desired. He was never around when William was growing up; he eludes serious questions with a string of tall tales and jokes. This is subject matter as old as the hills, but Wallace's take is nothing if not original. Desperate to know his father before he dies, William recreates his father's life as the stuff of legend itself. In chapters titled "In Which He Speaks to Animals," "How He Tamed the Giant," "His Immortality," and the like, Edward Bloom walks miles through a blizzard, charms the socks off a giant, even runs so fast that "he could arrive in a place before setting out to get there." In between these heroic episodes, Bloom dies not once but four times, working subtle variations on a single scene in which he counters his son's questions with stories--some of which are actually very witty, indeed. After all, he admits, "...if I shared my doubts with you, about God and love and life and death, that's all you'd have: a bunch of doubts. But now, see, you've got all these great jokes." The structure is a clever conceit, and the end product is both funny and wise. At the heart of both legends and death scenes live the same age-old questions: Who are you? What matters to you? Was I a good father? Was I a good son? In mapping the territory where myth meets everyday life, Wallace plunges straight through to fatherhood's archaic and mysterious heart. --Mary Park
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