4.5 stars. From the Booker Prize shortlist, [b:A Calling for Charlie Barnes|56620813|A Calling for Charlie Barnes|Joshua Ferris|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1627324196l/56620813._SY75_.jpg|87729868] is a great metafiction of the Midwest, of a family and a father-son relationship, a character study of an adoring buffoon of a dad and his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and the author's fond rewrite of Charlie's life to reflect success as the father would have envisioned it.
The reader wonders often which parts are real: the diagnosis, the preposterous inventions, the financial gimmicks, the five wives, the four children and no less than forty jobs, constant debt, and bankruptcies. Then, of course, the story is told by his stepson, Jake Barnes (a la [b:The Sun Also Rises|3876|The Sun Also Rises|Ernest Hemingway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509802323l/3876._SY75_.jpg|589497], the damaged unreliable narrator writer-author and his apologetic coda. The book is divided into Farce and Fiction and The Facts: Jake, the novelist, is telling the story of Charlie, the fabricator or Ferris is telling of his own father. The prose is dazzling and parts of it are hilarious, but what is true? It doesn't matter, it's such a good, moving story. ( )

Good story. Easy to read and engaging - perhaps mostly appealing to ageing men. ( )

Damn… when you’re an aspiring author, as I claim to be, there’s a tendency to categorize books into two buckets: the “how did this thing ever get published” bucket, and the “damn, this author is at a level I’ll never achieve” bucket. Joshua Ferris is operating at another level. This book is nothing short of brilliant—moving effortlessly from a heart-felt tribute to a fractured family, to a self-effacing quasi-memoir, to a child’s revelations of a parent’s shortcomings, to a meta-commentary about how we see ourselves and the power of controlling the narrative. There’s just so much going on here, so artfully rendered, I want to read it again immediately after finishing it. ( )

Age old topic done by many others (e.g. Updike) but very clever writing. ( )

Given the fact that I didn’t love an earlier book penned by Ferris (“The Unnamed”), my literary bar was set a bit low as I started “A Calling for Charlie Barnes.” I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this twist-filled portrait of a fascinating character — and how much I laughed despite the sobering topics that are woven through this narrative. Life-threatening illness. A string of failed marriages. Infidelity. Dysfunctional families. Financial struggles. I must admit it was an effort to keep the storyline straight in the final chapters. But the confusing twists are by design. I found the book hilarious, touching and insightful. ( )