Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

by Daniel Wallace

Overview

The classic novel that inspired the beloved Tim Burton film and the Broadway musical.

In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He knew more jokes than any man alive. At least that’s what he told his son, William. But now Edward Bloom is dying, and William wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father—this indefatigable teller of tall tales—before it’s too late. So, using the few facts he knows, William re-creates Edward’s life in a series of legends and myths, through which he begins to understand his father’s great feats, and his great failings. The result is hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616201647
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	05/15/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	196
Sales rank:	72,225
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels, including  Big Fish, which was adapted and released as a movie and a Broadway musical. His novels have been translated into over three-dozen languages. His essays and interviews have been published in The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, Poets & Writers and Our State magazine, where he was, for a short time, the barbecue critic. His short stories have appeared in over fifty magazines and periodicals. He was awarded the Harper Lee Award, given to a nationally recognized Alabama writer who has made a significant lifelong contribution to Alabama letters. He was inducted into the Alabama Literary Hall of Fame in 2022. He is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Part I

The Day He Was Born

In Which He Speaks to Animals

The Year it Snowed in Alabama

His Great Promise

My Father's Death: Take 1

The Girl in the River

His Quiet Charm

How He Tamed the Giant

In Which He Goes Fishing

The Day He Left Ashland

Entering a New World

Part II

The Old Lady and the Eye

My Father's Death: Take 2

His First Great Love

His Legendary Legs

In Which He Makes a Move

The Fight

On Meeting the In-Laws

His Three Labors

He Goes to War

My Father's Death: Take 3

The Day I Was Born

How He Saw Me

How He Saved My Life

His Immortality

His Greatest Power

In Which He Has a Dream

Part III

In Which He Buys a Town, and More

How it Ends

My Father's Death: Take 4

Big Fish

Editorial Reviews

A charming whopper of a tale.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Both comic and poignant.” —The New York Times

“Refreshing, original . . . Wallace mixes the mundane and the mythical. His chapters have the transformative quality of fable and fairy tale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A comic novel about death, about the mysteries of parents and the redemptive power of storytelling.” —USA Today

“An audacious, highly original debut novel . . . An imaginative, and moving, record of a son’s love for a charming, unknowable father.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher