| Title | Big Fish |
| Author | Daniel Wallace |
| Theme/Genre | Fiction |
| Synopsis | Big Fish is told from the perspective of a son, William, reflecting on his father’s life as his father lies on his death bed. The contents of his father’s life however are difficult to decipher from fiction. His father, Edward Bloom, always told tall tales, always. Whether it was describing the giant named Karl that Edward managed to tame, or the woman’s life he saved from a poisonous snake before she disappeared into thin air, or how as a boy Edward had read all the books in town, including the yellow-pages, and knew more than everyone else. Edwards stories are always fantastic and often very humorous. William feels anger and resentment because he feels that his father’s stories are little more than a veil for his father to hide behind. He suffers feelings of betrayal and neglect, like his father hides behind his tales to avoid a ‘real’ relationship with his family. This anger reaches a climax when William confronts his father on his death bed and even then—near sure death—Edward breaks into the telling of jokes and clearly fictitious accounts of his past. The reader is privileged however with realizing that the narrator is indeed William, and it comes to the fore that through the retelling of his father’s tales that William begins to understand who his father really was. William learns that sometimes the deepest truths of life, and deepest revelations about ourselves come from the stories we create. The metaphor speaks truer than the facts, and by the end of the story William himself finds himself the storyteller, and it’s the others who don’t believe. |
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| Personal Notes | This is a very touching story that brings out experiences and emotions that likely occur in even the most quotidian father son relationships. Like Turgenev's Father and Sons, I highly recommend this book to be read by fathers and sons, but I think female readers will also appreciate the beauty of the story and the moments of often keen romance. |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Date of Publication | 1998, first published with Olgonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 1999, Penquin Books. |
| Sample Quotes | "Remembering a man's stories makes him immortal, didn't you know that? "I think that if a man can be said to be loved by his son, then I think that man could be considered great."
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| Rating | 5 STARS |