Big Giant Floating Head

by Christopher Boucher

"Boucher makes the world come alive by making language come alive."
—George Saunders

A WILDLY INVENTIVE, HEARTBREAKING, AND HILARIOUS NEW NOVEL ABOUT A MAN WHOSE LIFE IS FALLING APART... IN VERY BIZARRE WAYS...

Christopher's life in small-town Coolidge is going from one catastrophe to another. He contracts a strange illness that divides him in half, undergoes a failure competition, and is driven to join a cult called The Unloveables. Can he regain his bearings? Figure out how it got this bad? And can he get out?
Heartfelt and riotously imaginative, Big Giant Floating Head is a profound, and slant, portrait of a life in turmoil, a tour-de-force meditation on love, loss, and redemption.

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published June 18, 2019

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

This is Christopher^Boucher, where ^=space. (default profile)

About the Author:
Christopher Boucher is the author of the novels How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and Golden Delicious.

He's also an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at Boston College and the managing editor of Post Road Magazine.

Reviews

[Ian Mond · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review for this novel features in the July 2019 issue of Locus Magazine...

... but clearly I loved it.

[Matilda Burn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yowch. A sad little book of short stories about a depressed, self-loathing, lonely divorcee learning about himself. I started this and hated it. I thought it was an 'experimental' creative writing professor doing All The Interesting Things to make an 'experimental' book. Absurdism? Check. Bizarre type settings? Check. Unreliable narrator? Check. Until I realised that the author actually did understand the meta-narrative he was pedalling and it wasn't perhaps as totally self-obsessed as I thought. I mean it is self-obsessed, but wittily, wryly self-obsessed as if the author is apologising the whole time for putting you through this.

The stories themselves are good and entertaining micro-worlds - floating heads in the sky, a word zoo, invisible dogs and a brick wall growing out of your forehead.

But I have to give this three stars because I just didn't care for Christopher Boucher (the author and the author self-insert protagonist) because I although I understood the schtick, after 17 chapters of the stuff I just got bored of the "clever" self-expression of a nihilist devotee of experimental literature. Like I get it, you probably went to UEA and did a creative writing course or something along those lines. That meant, I just didn't... care about the stories?

This was a sweet, sad selection of stories though and generally quite fun to read. So, if you're into experimental literature and less cynical than I am I think you'd love it.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of linked short stories about this big fat loser Chris Boucher. Yr mileage may vary - I liked the stories about big giant floating heads and Chris Boucher University for instance, but the more conceptual, whimsical stories about words and books as living things made me feel itchy, impatient. Still, buy it, read it, enjoy it - it will make you laugh at sadness, and Chris Boucher is balding, alone, needs the money.

[Sérgio Serra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've bought this book in February 2019, while on a short holiday in London, went to a Japanese restaurant and read the first story while waiting for my favourite dishes to go around the conveyor belt and come closer to me. I still have the chopsticks' envelope thingy as a bookmark. I really liked that story, the one about the giant heads. Then I took a flight back home, read the second story, didn't like it as much, and this book became a permanent feature in my To Finish pile next to bed.
In the meantime our lives changed. A pandemic hit. Right before that, I moved to the place I was vacationing in when I bought this book. So I picked it up again, read all the stories and realized that these are not short stories. The blurb says it's a novel, so why do I think these are short stories?
They may seem short stories, but they aren't. They're the way the author's different selves have reacted to the different events in his life; the events that have changed him and thus made him tell us the next event in a different way, through other lenses. That's what we do. When we're desperate, when we accept a certain new reality, when we're happy: we tell things differently. So does the author here. This book portraits change. And after I've realized that it's actually a novel, it changed me as well.
I really like the surrealistic nature of it. It's a metaphysical book, with no subtlety about it, aware of itself as a book, while still telling a story. It deals a lot with loneliness, grief, separation, and other uncomfortable subjects; so avoid if you're in a bad phase of your life...

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should say upfront that there may very well be some consciously unconscious bias to my words here as Chris Boucher is my MFA advisor. How bold of me to review a book by a man whom I'll be hanging out with in a month's time? who may very well have my grades and future in his hands? I probably wouldn't be so ballsy if I didn't have such a high opinion of this book. If this book is any indication to how his mind works, it's safe to say he wouldn't give a shit about my words here anyway. All the more reason I CAN'T WAIT to spend time with him.
But four stars? Why four stars then? Is it to not seem so overtly a bootlicker? Nah. It's reflective of my experience with this book -- so incredibly unlike any other I have read. I couldn't DEVOUR this book. I had to read it story by story, and slowly, at that, with time in between each because they were so very unique. I needed time to process each, to sit with each. Because each story is so surrealist/metaphorical, I couldn't easily jump from one to the next. And that, of course, is not a bad thing. It was so -- weird! -- that it needed effortful processing and I felt like I needed a little reality in between.
But what's a book if it doesn't challenge you, get you thinking, keeping you engaged?
(See you soon, prof!)

[Joelle Egan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher Boucher’s latest, Big Giant Floating Head, could be mistaken for a self-loathing pity party in 17 chapters disguised as an experimental fiction novel. To do so, however, would be to miss out on some moments of piercing reflection that illuminate different stages of grief and loss after a rejection of love. Each of the chapters are worthy of standing as an individual vignette, but they are linked together thematically by the struggling eponymous main character. The “Chris Boucher” in the book experiences a loss of self and explores questions about his worth in a variety of imagined scenes. His recent divorce serves as the undercurrent for his character to inhabit worlds that include: a university that offers classes on how to be “Chris;” a hotel inhabited by his past selves and everyone he has ever met; a “fail-off” competition; and a job that places him physically inside the pages of his own book as a scene-construction worker. Some of Boucher’s other conceits are less successful and the metaphors can become a bit heavy-handed, but each entry is cleverly depicted and contain enough humor to keep the pathos at bay. In an entertaining way, Boucher’s Big Giant Floating Head provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on coping with a difficult situation.

Thanks to Edelweiss and Melville House for an ARC of this book in exchange for an objective review.

[Wendie Barney Boucher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book for me. I was not familiar with the author but chose the book as part of a reading challenge I do with my students at school. (Read a book by an author with the same last name as you) I probably would have given it a higher rating if I had taken a bit more time to look at the writings of the author. I really enjoyed some of the stories but found a few difficult to follow and try to figure out exactly what was happening.

[Steve Tripp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why I read this .. maybe it was the title that drew me in when I saw it in the new book section of the library. It's a little (OK - it's a lot) silly, clever (at times), but overall (unfortunately) I think it was just kind of dumb. I can't say I got much enjoyment thought it make me chuckle 2-3 times. It won't be hard to return

[Mickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is the literary fiction version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I feel more emotionally moved by it than I probably should. It's like enjoying a warm cup of cocoa in a messy home office. I recommend it for people who are okay with being average and aren't committed to linear timelines.

[Javi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky, surreal, sad, nostalgic and somehow funny at times. The first half is kind of boring though, but the second half is quite good.

"Trout Heart" takes the price as the best story in the book, I really liked that one.

[Georgette · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the hell did I just read?? Very quirky. May be too much for some people.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Experimental novels can be grating, but this one was surreal and funny and managed to hold a thread all the way until the end. I laughed out loud at least three times.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to give it 2.5 stars. But ever since I read it I think about it all the time. It’s a bizarre book, but the lasting effect for me was of sadness and humanity.