Big Fish:
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REVIEW BY TODD KEITH
Thank Daniel Wallace -- first-time novelist from Birmingham, Alabama, now residing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina -- for a singular and surprisingly comic contemplation on the death and life of a father as witnessed by his son. But this event is not just witnessed, it is turned over and imaginatively recreated -- four times, to be exact -- until the son William Bloom can get it right. William's father is dying. A salesman from Ashland, Alabama, Edward Bloom is revealed in a series of amusing, backward glances as a man quick with a rib-splitting joke and improbable tales of his "heroic" past. These backward glances -- "He Speaks to Animals," "How He Tamed the Giant," "How He Saved My Life," for example -- are the stuff of modern-day legend. All the while William narrates his father's life and adventures, he waits by the deathbed preparing for what takes four different tries at goodbye, playing the serious son to Edward's out-of-place witticisms. As William tries to finally understand and connect with his father before he passes, we realize the scene is not only about saying goodbye to Edward, it is also about truly listening to his stories. A large part of the great pleasure that comes from reading Big Fish stems from its structure. Loose enough to admit wonder and a strain of mystical realism, the novella also maintains the cohesiveness of good theater. In fact, it is easy to imagine the story as a tightly wound play. Wallace maintains the threadbare balance between the humorist's tall-tale tone and the serious, poignant theme of how one father and son face death. Which brings us to the central, most revealing discovery of this small journey: Depending on how much Daniel Wallace and his narrator William overlap, it is clear that one gift Edward gave to his son was the rare ability to spin a deft story -- no matter how much fact might be found in Wallace's fiction. Todd Keith is a freelance writer currently completing a publication about the rivers of Alabama.
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