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A review by melanie_page
Big Ray by Michael Kimball
5.0
“Having a dead father is distracting.”
Big Ray: the morbidly obese father whom you experience like the first big hill of a roller coaster. Of course, going up the hill it’s not so bad and you wonder why everyone else feels apprehension; you just don’t get it. Then, when things get scary, it happens fast and you’re not ready because you felt so superior in the first place. Narrator Daniel Todd Carrier learns of his father’s death and processes the relationship with the man everyone called “Big” Ray. A lot of what Daniel tells seems normal-ish (throw in some humiliation and occasional hitting), and the hatred for his father reads as exaggerated. It’s a familiar story. Most of the book the reader goes up the hill, and it’s not until the very end that things get really terrible.
The most impressive feat of Kimball is his ability to do two things at once, all the time. Because Big Ray’s father killed a litter of kittens, Daniel isn’t allowed to have pets: “As some kind of shiny consolation, my parents would buy me glossy photobooks of cats and dogs for my birthdays and Christmas. Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly lonely, I would pull one of the glossy photobooks down from the bookshelf in my bedroom and starting naming the cats or the dogs.” Funny and Sad.
It’s easy to write about loving or hating someone, but how does one accomplish both, even three sentences apart? Daniel notes his father’s love of grilling and how “he didn’t like even a hint of blood in his cooked meat. The fire colored his face mean. Sometimes, in the mornings before school, my father would look at the way I was dressed and say, ‘Looking sharp.’ That always made me feel really good.” Hateful and Reassuring.
Kimball’s style takes you along in a familiar manner, assuming you’ve read his other books. His simple sentences do a lot of emotional work. Daniel claims, “It was physically exhausting having a dead father.” Each word is so precise, as Daniel appears sympathetic and cold. Kimball also captures complexity by manipulating vowel sounds: “For most of my life, I have been afraid of my father. After he died, I was afraid to be a person without a father, but I also felt relieved he was dead.” After pairing the soft A sounds of “father” and “afraid” twice, “relieved” is emphasized by how sharp the E’s are in contrast.
Kimball’s novel is fascinating for the work it accomplishes in so little space and reminds us that we need not be complicated to express our complexities.
Big Ray: the morbidly obese father whom you experience like the first big hill of a roller coaster. Of course, going up the hill it’s not so bad and you wonder why everyone else feels apprehension; you just don’t get it. Then, when things get scary, it happens fast and you’re not ready because you felt so superior in the first place. Narrator Daniel Todd Carrier learns of his father’s death and processes the relationship with the man everyone called “Big” Ray. A lot of what Daniel tells seems normal-ish (throw in some humiliation and occasional hitting), and the hatred for his father reads as exaggerated. It’s a familiar story. Most of the book the reader goes up the hill, and it’s not until the very end that things get really terrible.
The most impressive feat of Kimball is his ability to do two things at once, all the time. Because Big Ray’s father killed a litter of kittens, Daniel isn’t allowed to have pets: “As some kind of shiny consolation, my parents would buy me glossy photobooks of cats and dogs for my birthdays and Christmas. Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly lonely, I would pull one of the glossy photobooks down from the bookshelf in my bedroom and starting naming the cats or the dogs.” Funny and Sad.
It’s easy to write about loving or hating someone, but how does one accomplish both, even three sentences apart? Daniel notes his father’s love of grilling and how “he didn’t like even a hint of blood in his cooked meat. The fire colored his face mean. Sometimes, in the mornings before school, my father would look at the way I was dressed and say, ‘Looking sharp.’ That always made me feel really good.” Hateful and Reassuring.
Kimball’s style takes you along in a familiar manner, assuming you’ve read his other books. His simple sentences do a lot of emotional work. Daniel claims, “It was physically exhausting having a dead father.” Each word is so precise, as Daniel appears sympathetic and cold. Kimball also captures complexity by manipulating vowel sounds: “For most of my life, I have been afraid of my father. After he died, I was afraid to be a person without a father, but I also felt relieved he was dead.” After pairing the soft A sounds of “father” and “afraid” twice, “relieved” is emphasized by how sharp the E’s are in contrast.
Kimball’s novel is fascinating for the work it accomplishes in so little space and reminds us that we need not be complicated to express our complexities.