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. 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. Desperate to know his father before he dies, William recreates his father's life as the stuff of legend itself. This is subject matter as old as the hills, but Wallace's take is nothing if not original. He was never around when William was growing up he eludes serious questions with a string of tall tales and jokes. From his son's standpoint, Edward Bloom leaves much to be desired. In Big Fish, Daniel Wallace angles in search of a father and hooks instead a fictional debut as winning as any this year.
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