BIG RAY in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Reader's Digest, Time Out Chicago

I feel so lucky that BIG RAY has received so many great reviews:

The Wall Street Journal: “astonishingly moving … to mesmerizing effect. … Big Ray is an appalling tale told with anger, dark humor and surprising tenderness.”

The Boston Globe: “Distilled, intense … Fear and revulsion mingle with a kind of helpless love.”

Reader's Digest: “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.”

Time Out Chicago: “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.”

BIG RAY in The New York Times

I never expected any of my books to get covered at The New York Times, but there's a wonderful little review of BIG RAY there that says, in part: "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, and this portrayal is the better for it."

Big Ray (the man and the book)

Jessica Anya Blau asked me some great questions about BIG RAY at the The Nervous Breakdown. We talk about the real man, the book, and why I don't forgive my father.

Huffington Post: The Underrepresentation of Overweight Characters

I wrote a piece about obesity in literature because the Huffington Post asked me too and because I just published a novel about a super obese father, BIG RAY. I grew up with an obese father and this was long before people were overweight like they are today. People weren't used to seeing people that big back then, so it was embarrassing to have a dad as big as mine was. The other kids made fun of him and they made fun of me because I was his son. I was flawed by my association to my father.

Michael Kimball's Enormous Death-Eye

Blake Butler asked me some great questions about BIG RAY and I tried to answer them. The interview is up at Vice. Plus, Blake says this: "Somehow [BIG RAY] manages to be simultaneously Kimball’s most brutal and heartfelt and blackly hilarious book yet."

BIG RAY @ KGB Lit Mag

There's a super thoughtful review of BIG RAY from Ian F. King at the KGB Bar Lit Magazine, which says, in part: "BIG RAY's power is unquestionable."

BIG RAY is Book of the Week at Oprah.com

Thanks to Andrew Keating for the nice interview over at Cobalt Review.

And Big Ray is Book of the Week at Oprah.com. Oprah calls the novel "gorgeous." That's all I ever wanted.

The Next Best Book Club

The good Lori Hettler says all kinds of nice things about Big Ray and gives the novel five stars over at The Next Best Book Club.

Publishers Weekly

There's a nice review of Big Ray in Publishers Weekly. It says, in part: "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.'”

Death Becomes Him

There's a super-thoughtful profile in the Urbanite's fiction issue. The wonderful Bret McCabe covers all of my books and then some. He says, in part: Big Ray is "part eulogy, part psychological retaliation, and an entirely devastating whole."

Vice

There's an excerpt from Big Ray in the June issue of Vice that also just went live.

Plus, Vice named the cover of Big Ray "Best Cover of the Month."

And there's a sweet mini-review of Big Ray from the wonderful Megan Boyle, which says, in part: "prepare to be utterly punished."

The Bomb Interview: My Mind Zooming In

My friend and genius Adam Robinson interviewed me about Us for Bomb. He asks me some impossible questions and I tell him what I'd be doing if I wasn't writing novels.

BIG RAY

I love this cover -- the presence in the absence, at once beautiful and unsettling. Click on it for a bigger version. Bloomsbury will publish BIG RAY Fall 2012.

BIG RAY

There will probably be some tweaks -- a bigger font size for the title and maybe white for my name and the placement of "a novel" might move -- but I love this cover too much to not show it to everybody already. Bloomsbury will publish BIG RAY Fall 2012.

Michael Kimball Will Not Back Down

My friend Jen Michalski asks me some questions about Big Ray over at JMWW -- for instance, how I wrote it without anybody knowing.

BIG RAY to Bloomsbury

I'm having a pretty great year so far and I feel really grateful for it. I don't even know how to explain how grateful I feel. I'm so happy to announce that I just sold the world rights to a new novel, BIG RAY. It's the story of a son coming to terms with the sudden death of his obese father. It's told through 500 brief entries, moving back and forth between past and present, the father's death and his life, between an abusive childhood and adult understanding. BIG RAY went to Kathy Belden at Bloomsbury USA, which will publish in Fall 2012, and Michael Fishwick at Bloomsbury UK, which will publish in Winter 2013.