Masterpiece? NoBad Book? NoUnlikeable characters and a generally depressing 'atmosphere' does not equal bad writting. But the story felt inconsistent; there were times it was engaging, sometimes I could not care about anyone. This eventually got annoying.Well written and interesting, but personal...
Quite a devastating book with its confusing literary structure, the void it leaves once you've read the last line, but most of all, the depth of Vann's understanding when wrenching out the dark yet somehow starkly relatable aspects of each character.It shows a little too much of myself but I lear...
Some fantastically descriptive writing around the wild and bleak Alaskan wilderness - in fact, this was my favourite thing about the book. I struggled at times with the intensity of the complex relationships, and at times found it lurched a bit clumsily from one story to another. Shocking twist w...
If you've ever owned a sailboat or had a friend who did, you know how it begins: with a dream. You dream about the ship, and gradually the dream consumes you. Practical considerations lose all meaning ... until, inevitably, the dream morphs into a nightmare. David Vann is familiar with that night...
My first day and evening, I found a place to live where the houses were narrow and thin streets traversed but never descended directly. Long wooden stairways, their sea-grayed wood slick from mist and worn like stone, fell through skunk weed, fern, and salmonberry toward the docks and ocean below...
Plenty of propane stoves available now, and they were still using one with wet fuel. She’d be bringing fumes into the tent. The wind was something you could learn to hate. Pressurized and vindictive. Irene’s hood blew off, her head exposed now to the rain, but she jammed t...
THE GREAT FLOOD. LANGUAGE TURNED only to babbling. Humanity erased over and over. The Bible is about our fight against god. And somehow we’re more powerful, simply because of our will, because we’re persistent. We refuse to be erased. It’s been a bitter fight. The great flood. Think of how many l...
It’s an older section of town, a small two-story. I talk with his wife Barbara, who is an artist. She’s friendly and smart and interesting, but I can tell she’s also worried about my coming here, wants to protect her husband after all he’s been through with the media. Media trucks were on the law...
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. Galen knew this to be true. H...
Hibernation, but called estivation, since it’s for the hot summer instead of cold winter. When everything is unbearable and exposure too much, the air too hot to breathe. My mother the best person in this world, the most generous, the strongest, but this was her dry season, when she was more like...
The paint job was even worse than I remembered, and rust stains were everywhere. The stern ladder was not out, so we had to board the stern of the next boat and climb over at midships. Standing on my own deck, I was filled with despair. The deck was stained with rust and all of the wood on the hu...