Big Fish

Big Fish is the debut and breakthrough novel of American author Daniel Wallace. First published in English in 1998, it was adapted in 2003 by director Tim Burton into the film of the same name, Big Fish, which became a critical and popular success. The book is short and composed of many brief chapters, like a scrapbook of a father's legends. At its heart is a father and son. Father Edward Bloom spends his whole life telling his son about his experiences: it snowed in Alabama on the day he was born; he could talk to animals; he tamed a giant wider than three strong men standing side by side; he helped a one-eyed old woman recover a glass eye that could see the future; and he once bought an entire town. Giants, blizzards, ghostly towns, conjoined singers, and countless jokes make up the bizarre world in the father's mouth. The son, William (the book's "I"), believes these stories less and less as he grows up. He grows tired and weary of his father's exaggerated tales, and father and son gradually drift apart. He wants a "normal" father, a life whose truth can be verified. Only when his father's life reaches its end does William truly enter his father's world and try to understand and tell him in his father's way. By the river, before his son, the father becomes a big fish and swims away. The book is threaded with "My Father's Death: Take One, Two, Three, Four," rehearsing farewell again and again while drawing closer and closer to the truth. With seemingly casual humor and fantasy, the novel depicts the difficulty of understanding between father and son and their eventual reconciliation, and the ordinary person's longing to "tell one's life as a story." It is not a standard family drama but a metaphor about memory, faith, and imagination: you need not believe every detail is true, but you can believe in the feeling behind the story.