Omschrijving
Roy is still young when his father, a failed dentist and hapless fisherman, commits suicide on the deck of his boat. Throughout his life, Roy returns to that moment, gripped by its memory and the shadow it casts over his small-town boyhood. Finally, Roy lays his father's ghost to rest. But not before he exacts a gruelling, exhilarating revenge.
An extraordinary, ground-breaking piece of fiction ... Nothing quite like this book has been written before
A richly gifted newcomer
Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and genuine surprises
Oh my god, Legend of a Suicide just bowled me over completely. It is such a tender, heartbreaking, breathtaking, horrifying and insanely compelling read that when I finished it I went straight back to the beginning and round again. I implore anyone with functioning eyes to read this book
So hard to put down that I am thinking of suing David Vann for several hours of lost sleep
This book squeezes more life out of the first hundred pages than most books could manage in a thousand, which is pretty impressive, considering it's a book about death
In his portrayal of a young son's love for his lost father David Vann has created a stunning work of fiction: surprising, beautiful and intensely moving
One of the most gripping debuts I've ever read
Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget
An American classic ... harrowing but beautifully wrought ... prose as clear and bracing as a mountain stream
One jaw-droppingly powerful, courageous and original fiction debut...As a 10th work of fiction this would be impressive; as a debut, it is remarkable
Hands down the best fictional debut we have read this year
For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure, but the story it tells - the story of the suicide of the author's father - has an immediacy and sharpness made all the more special by the tone of distance in the narrative and the beauty of the writing
David Vann's Legend of a Suicide is brave, fantastically well written, and completely defies categorisation
From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both
From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both
Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget
David Vann was born on Adak Island, Alaska and spent his childhood in Ketchikan. A contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Men's Journal, Outside and National Geographic Adventure, he is author of the best-selling memoir A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea and a forthcoming novel, Caribou Island. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow, taught at Stanford and Cornell, and is currently a professor at the University of San Francisco. Legend of a Suicide won the 2007 Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.