Fictional Father
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A recovering alcoholic lives in the shadow of a world famous comic strip and its tyrannical creator
Caleb is a middle-aged painter with a non-starter career and a checkered past. He also happens to be the only child of one of the world’s most famous cartoonists, Jimmi Wyatt. Known for the internationally beloved father and son comic Sonny Side Up, Jimmi made millions drawing saccharine family stories while neglecting his own son.
Now sober, Caleb is haunted by his wasted past and struggling to take responsibility for his present before it’s too late. His always patient boyfriend, James, is reaching the end of his rope. When Caleb gets the chance to step out from his father’s shadow and shape the most public aspect of the family business, he makes every bad decision and watches his life fall apart. Is it too late to repair the harm? Are we forever doomed to make the same mistakes our parents did?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ollmann's funny, faux-meta memoir follows Caleb Wyatt, the angst-ridden son of Jimmi Wyatt, a cartoonist whose treacly daily strip, Sonny Side Up, earned him the nickname "Everybody's Dad." But Jimmi's actually an egomaniac with little time for his wife and son. By middle age, Cal is a recovering alcoholic struggling to launch his own art career. When Jimmi dies and bequeaths his strip to his son, Cal considers the proposition, to the surprise of his father's staff—who reveal that assistants have drawn it for years—and Cal's boyfriend, James, a Black flight attendant who's had it with Cal's spoiled-rich-kid ways. Cal hires a salty, sober editor-for-hire, whom he meets at a 12-step program, and she offers, "Do you think—in the present climate—that anyone wants to listen to a rich, old white man complaining about an older, richer white man?... Of course they do!" Cal takes this tough-love kick in the pants and "finds his voice." Ollmann's illustrations are ugly-charming, wrinkled and shadowed, but tinted in bright colors (with yellowed "vintage" cartoons a particular visual joy). The framing device, in which Ollmann wrestles with a story that has been told before—Cal's life is reminiscent of the real Dennis the Menace—requires acrobatic parsing. The reward is a complex look at an artist's evolving relationship to the past.
