“Big Ray is a disgusting
man and a great character. He’s dead at the start of the
novel, and it’s impossible not to wish him deader. … Mr.
Kimball is not one to flinch”
--
The New York
Times
Oprah’s Book of the
Week
Available
from Bloomsbury USA
and
Bloomsbury Circus
(UK)
“Gorgeous”
-- Oprah.com
“Distilled, intense … Fear and revulsion mingle with a
kind of helpless love.”
[Big
Ray is]
“astonishingly moving … to mesmerizing effect. …
Big Ray
is an appalling tale told
with anger, dark humor and surprising tenderness.”
“In his novel BIG RAY, Kimball offers a complex and
graceful peek at one man’s grieving process: It’s a
eulogy, a tribute, an indictment, and a painfully
truthful examination of fathers and sons.”
-- Los Angeles Times, Jacket
Copy
“Stunning … gripping … fascinating”
-- BBC Radio 4
“Emotional and yet funny”
“This plainspoken novel about a man coming to terms with
his abusive father’s death sneaks up on you--and is
unlike anything else you’ve read.”
-- Reader’s Digest
“Prepare to be utterly punished"
-- Vice
excerpt of Big Ray @ Vice
“Novels like Michael
Kimball’s Big
Ray reveal that
corpulence has become a go-to metaphor for emotional
unrest.”
-- Salon
“Psychologically acute, Michael
Kimball’s narrative is … both ingenious and painfully
funny, as well as deeply moving.”
-- Daily Mail
“Despite his disturbing material, Kimball manages his
narrative with a dark humor, as well as stirring empathy.
Big Ray is an ogre, yes but a multi-faceted one -- and
most poignantly, a father whose son continues to yearn
for his love.”
“Paperback of the Week: … in this sparingly written
document, which pares back all extraneous detail to get
at the emotional core, there’s a striking degree of
honesty, which Kimball/Carrier tries to present almost
casually as though he weren’t deeply troubled but just
thinking things through. It is, above all, a convincing
depiction of a man trying to work through conflicting
emotions.”
-- The Herald
“It is rare for obesity to be tackled this directly in
literature and Kimball is ahead of the pack with this
intimate account … Kimball’s delicately layered account
of Daniel’s efforts to connect with his dad builds to a
whole that is intensely moving.”
“One of ‘The Ten Best Books of 2012’”
-- L Magazine
MK’s article about the underrepresentation of overweight
characters @ Huffington Post
“Dude can write.”
-- HTMLGIANT
“There aren’t many characters as big as Big Ray in modern
fiction.”
-- Los Angeles Review of
Books
“Together, the fragments form a surprisingly enthralling
portrait of an abusive father … a spellbinding and
unflinching meditation on forgiveness, a novel that
secures Kimball’s reputation as a literary innovator.”
“Michael Kimball has been writing
innovative, compelling and beautifully felt books for
years, but Big
Ray seems a
break-through and culmination all at once. It's funny and
terrifying and it's his masterpiece, at least so far.”
-- Sam Lipsyte
“An uncompromising work of power and grace. I finished
reading it a week ago, but I still can't put it down."
-- Jon McGregor
“Reading Big
Ray is like
hearing a close friend processing some serious loss.
Michael Kimball does emotional immediacy better than any
writer alive, I shit you not.”
-- HTMLGIANT
MK and Brad Listi talk about polar bears, the ocean,
eating a burrito, and a fear of finishing @
Other People.
"The book reads like a memoir, the entirely believable
product of a son grappling with the death and life of his
father. The narrator talks frankly of his estrangement
and efforts to connect, the abuse he suffered and his
mixed feelings; the obituary, he notes, listed those who
preceded Ray in death and those who survived him. 'I’m
one of the people who survived.'”
“Big
Ray is a great
novel, a small books that happens to be about the idea of
bigness. … Measured sentences come one after another,
like ticking time bombs. … Kimball’s prose is so
luminously clear that each new paragraph seems like
another piece of evidence in the case for and against Big
Ray. … I finished it feeling shaken. In this small book
Kimball has captured the terrible contradictions of life
as it’s lived.”
From an interview @ Vice: “Somehow [Big Ray] manages to be simultaneously
Kimball’s most brutal and heartfelt and blackly
hilarious book yet.”
“Michael Kimball’s Big Ray is a powerfully intimate and sorrowful
work, a novel that will forever mark your consciousness
with its indelible and heartfelt beauty."
MK talks about obesity in fiction on
BBC Radio 4’s Open Book.
From an interview @ The Nervous Breakdown: “Big Ray is Michael’s … most intimate and
moving … You “can’t help but be somewhat changed after
reading this book
From an interview @ Charlotte Viewpoint: “This deeply affecting novel”
“Hinged on the border between love and
hate, between redemption and condemnation, Big Ray is a
tremendously beautiful novel that tackles death and
obesity and child abuse and forgiveness from a strikingly
new perspective. … an enormously powerful examination of
truth and love and cowardice and courage between a father
and a son.”
“Big Ray has an honesty and a forthrightness of approach
… which serve to establish … an intense and personal
connection, like I feel in the best nonfiction. But this
isn’t nonfiction. The ambition on display in Kimball’s
book is pretty clearly novelistic. His subjects are big
ones.”
“Michael Kimball gained a devoted following with three
brilliant novels (Us, Dear
Everybody,
and The Way the
Family Got Away), all of which deal honestly and
unconventionally with loss. His latest work,
Big
Ray, is his
most powerful: A propulsive first-person narrative by a
man mourning his abusive and obese (over 500 pounds)
father’s death.
“Big
Ray is a
lovely, very melancholy book, and one that leaves an
imprint in the mind just like Big Ray’s on that armchair
[on the cover]. ”
-- Big Other
“In the novel Big Ray, Michael Kimball uses the phrase ‘my
father’ over eight hundred times. … “Michael Kimball uses
that phrase so many times it begins to weigh on you … The
father is unbearable.”
“Both humorous and heartbreaking, it has gained a
permanent place on my bookshelf. … It’s a book to return
to again and again … for life.”
-- Bookseller
[Big
Ray] “packs the
emotional charge of a lifetime.”
-- Booklist
“Big
Ray is a novel
that has the feel and authenticity of a memoir.”
“The compelling nature of the character
is never in doubt. Big Ray crashes through the 182 pages
of this slim volume, pushing everything else to the side
to make way for his bulk. One week later, this reviewer
was still having nightmares about him.”
“Kimball’s story takes on something of
a redemptive, Job-like intensity. … It is a well-told
story that is not easy to forget.”
-- Shelf
Awareness
“elegantly straightforward”
-- Library Journal
“The most impressive feat of Kimball is his ability to do
two things at once, all the time … funny and sad …
hateful and reassuring.”
-- JMWW
In Big
Ray, Kimball
writes “with a previously untapped range of emotion and
intimacy."
“Big Ray’s
power is unquestionable.”
“When I finished Big Ray, I was thankful for the dad I have. …
Be prepared to have your heart broken. You will love
every second of it.”
”Overwhelming … In Big Ray, Michael Kimball has accomplished
something astonish. In seeking to explain how love and
hate can exist at once, he’s given us the experience of
loving and hating. … You’ll both love and hate him for
it.”
“Fall head over heels for Michael
Kimball’s Big
Ray."
“arresting”
-- Full Stop
Big Ray is "part eulogy, part psychological
retaliation, and an entirely devastating whole."
-- Urbanite
Big Ray: Best Cover of the Month @
Vice
“Big Ray,
the man, made an indelible human impression on me.
Big
Ray, Michael
Kimball's terrific new novel, is genuinely moving because
it is so rigorously unsentimental. Kimball is a powerful
and courageous writer.”
-- Dana Spiotta
“Big Ray is disturbing in the most extraordinary
ways, and in the end extraordinarily touching also.
There’s nothing quite like it I’ve ever read till now
(though there were times I thought the ghost of Barry
Hannah was whispering in my ear.) It’s amazing.”
“Elegy, meditation, story, final reckoning—whatever you
want to call it, Big Ray is mesmerizing. Sorrowful and honest,
the kind of book that compels, not compromises...”
“Big
Ray is
stunning, haunting, and beautiful. This groundbreaking
and unforgettable novel should not be missed.”