Review by Booklist Review
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 [BKL My 1 97] will love this one, too. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"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. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An audacious, highly original debut novel, in which a son attempts to resolve the mysteries surrounding his father by re-creating the man's life as a series of exuberant tall tales. Edward Bloom has grown wealthy running his own import/export business. Restlessly wandering the world, he has returned home to see his wife and son only at rare, unpredictable intervals. Now, however, he's come home to die, and William is desperate to understand something of his father's life and character before he vanishes. But his father, an incorrigible jokester, deflects all of his son's queries with one-liners. A baffled William, waiting for the end, begins to create a series of tall tales in which his enigmatic parent is remade as a paradigmatic American folk hero. Growing up in Alabama as a ``strong quiet boy, with a mind of his own,'' this mythic version of Edward has an affinity with wild animals and the uncanny. He reads every book in town, tames a lonely giant who has taken to eating the locals crops and dogs, and hitches a ride on a giant catfish. As a young man he saves a child from an unearthly dog, rescues a lovely water spirit, and returns an enchanted eye to its rightful owner. As a wealthy older man he preserves a small southern town from the rancorous present by becoming its feudal lord. William narrates these stories in a language that nicely mixes the simplicity and tang of the folk tale with a droll, knowing sense of humor. All the episodes seem infused with a defiant, despairing love; in the end, the dying Edward outwits death by transforming himself into (literally) a ``big fish,'' which his son returns to its ancestral waters. More a series of ingenious sketches than a cohesive novel, but, still, a vigorous updating of the purely American genre of the tall taleas well as an imaginative, and moving, record of a son's love for a charming, unknowable father. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
