This movie was one of my favourites. When I found out that it was a book I was stoked. This book was just too... full of issues that it didn’t work for me. I wanted to love it so bad.

I am aware it was written in 1999. 20 years is a long time in the grand scheme of progress but I still don’t like how much of this book was portrayed and while I enjoyed some of the stories about Edward I couldn’t get past the things that bothered me.

1. Edward is selfish AF. He literally spends his whole family life on the road. His wife and his son are left to accept his comings and goings because he’s a man who can’t sit still.

2. The author refers to a fat woman as a whale. I get descriptive words when showing us the build of humans but to actually compare the body of a woman to a whale was so fatphobic and I couldn’t let that one go.

3. The book describes how women are meant to stay home and cool and clean and rear children and they love it because they are women and that is what they’re for and men can’t because they’re meant to roam and be men. Ohhhkayyyyyyyy.

4. He literally has a mid life crisis with a woman half his age and leaves not only his wife but her as well while he galavants all over cause he can’t sit still.

5. There is a lot of moments where I feel like he and his son are going to have this breakthrough love/regret/forgiveness moment and there just isn’t. The son seems to spend the whole book feeling like shit about his runaway dad and in the end just accepts that this is who he is. His whole ego and shitty personality are glorified. The son keeps reminding us how everyone loves his dad and I’m like yeah... dude is a narcissist.

6. The mother in his whole life is broken down into a beautiful woman who everyone wants who he gets and is weepy when he’s dying. That’s it. He cheats on her and the whole romance between them isn’t shit cause he doesn’t stick around or share any more love beyond that time he snagged her and another guy didn’t.

7. The ending... was just... I can’t even. I wanted to cry and it wasn’t because it was beautiful it was just... all of a sudden the big lying liar face is a fish. Cue my wtf face.

The moral of the story is this. While I loved the movie and wanted to love this book. I didn’t. It didn’t age well and thank goodness it was short. I am not one to rant and give band reviews but I was beyond disappointed in this book and the way it was just interesting enough to NOT let me DNF but just problematic enough for me to dislike this “whimsical” man who is really just a selfish cheating ass.