The Watermelon King

My "books to read" list - at least the one I currently use - dates back to Christmas 2002, when Michael purchased me an adorable book-tracking book. It has served me quite happily. So no entry on the list is even four years old. Yet I cannot for the life of me remember the circumstances that led me to put Daniel Wallace's The Watermelon King on the list. But list it I did, and this past weekend, I actually got around to reading it.

It came as a bit of a surprise. In addition to a quirky title, it had a quirky design. (You can see the cover here.) And this is when I discovered that it was by the author of Big Fish, the 2003 film directed by Tim Burton and starring Ewan McGregor. I watched this movie with my parents (it is right up their alley); while I found it sweet, I couldn't imagine seeking out works by the author. And yet apparently I had. Anyway, on with the book...

The Watermelon King is set in the same fictional town as Big Fish - Ashland, Alabama. And in both stories, a young man is in search of a parent's past; in both, the father figure has created a world of fabulous tales that cannot be believed. But perhaps they should be.

Wallace's characters are mostly caricature, and yet roughly plausible, even when the events befalling them are not. In TWK, our hero Thomas Rider spends the first half of the novel allowing them to speak for themselves, and make their case about their role in his mother's life and death. And once he takes over the narrative, events again converge in a way that sweeps everyone in the town along with it. The journey's end is mostly predictable; the past that leads you there is not quite.

I enjoyed reading TWK. It passes quickly and has a strong forward momentum. I started it while lying on the beach, which may be why I would label it "beach reading." More accurately, it's for a wicker chair on a veranda (a porch will do) on a sticky afternoon, with a pitcher of lemonade by your side.