Ray in Reverse by Daniel Wallace

I have to start off first by admitting that this review is going to be fairly biased. You might be interested to know that I am currently taking a creative writing course with Daniel Wallace at UNC-CH. For those of you who don't know, Wallace is the author of Big Fish, which was made into a movie by Tim Burton a few years back. I happen to think he's an awesome guy, fun teacher, and great writer. So now that you are aware of my personal bias, I will continue on with the review...
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This book is more a collection of stories than it is the standard novel. However, each chapter (or story) reveals a different period in the main character, Ray's life. We start off in Heaven and end in Heaven, but the middle sections go from Ray's later days down to his early childhood. I felt that the latest chapters of his life (in the beginning of the book) were the most emotional and touching. They provide a glimpse of the relationship Ray has with his wife after years of struggle. Even though we don't know what's happened between them at this point, Wallace does a great job at evincing the strain and bittersweetness between the couple. From there the stories travel back in time revealing bits and pieces of the past to help the reader understand how Ray got to be the person he is at the end of his life.
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I found that I really loved most of the stories. Some of them were sad, others hilarious, and one or two of them were a little slow, but necessary to understand the rest of the book. By the end I felt a real sense of closure, a full circle of Ray's life, if you will. Daniel Wallace conveyed that very well. In all honesty, I was pretty surprised by how much I enjoyed this book; seeing as I wasn't extremely wild about Big Fish, which I read over this past Christmas break. Both books were fairly short reads, as are the rest of Wallace's publishings. Usually they round out to be no more than 230 pages or so. .
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Ray in Reverse was definitely a good find. It's rare to come across, though, due to its being published by a small company in Chapel Hill. I know copies can found used at Amazon.com, though, as well as at UNC's main library -- though that probably won't help most of you. But I've already checked out another one of Wallace's books and am looking forward to reading even more of them down the road - as well as telling him what I think about his work : )