Big Ray

Treading the line between fiction and memoir, Big Ray is an exploration of the death of a parent, written in 500 tiny sections for the narrator's father Ray, who died weighing 500 pounds. The novel is a curious mix of the tender and the angry, which is a pretty accurate description of how many of us feel towards our parents. Ray is a more difficult parent than most: frustrated by life, he takes his aggression out on his wife and children. The beauty of the novel is that the narrator, Ray's son Daniel, resents and almost hates his father, but still desires his praise.

The narrative jumps between the chronological tale of Ray's life, and Daniel's experiences of the months following Ray's death. Often the shortest sections are the most affecting: "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. Everything about my father seemed complicated like that." Many of the emotions will be familiar to those who have experienced loss, as when Daniel describes the flimsiness of the walls - and hence the flimsiness of the entire world - now that his father is gone.

Big Ray is a true accomplishment: sparse, beautiful and heartwrenching.