Legend of a Suicide by David Vann is a challenging book to read. It's a collection of five short stories and a novella, all centered around Jim Fenn and his son Roy. Jim is apparently based on Vann's own father, Jim Vann, who killed himself when he was 40. These stories appear to be a way of examining that act--how it came to happen, the impact it had on others, and what might have transpired if things had gone differently, but not any more happily.
The stories are stand-alone and complete within themselves, sometimes telling contradictory versions of the same story. While all are well-written, I found some of them to be almost too well-written--kind of the overdone, MFA-student-crafting-gone-overboard that sometimes causes a story to lose momentum because it's just so carefully and meticulously put together, if that makes sense. The final story, The Higher Blue, feels a bit strained to be arty in a way that distracts from the story overall.
But the novella, Sukkwan Island, is a harrowing, frightening, breathtaking piece of work. I won't give spoilers, but the premise is that Jim, knowing he's a colossal screw-up and reeling from his most recent relationship failure, decides to be a better father by taking 13-year-old Roy to stay on an uninhabited Alaskan island for a year, live off the land by foraging and hunting and fishing. You know from the get-go that this is going to be a disaster, but just how the disaster unfolds, and how the characters end up, is shocking and riveting.
Vann is an intensely atmospheric writer, and setting plays a big role in his storytelling, such as Roy's reaction to being on the Alaskan island with his father:
"Roy stopped in front of their cabin and looked out at the water in a pale U before him that seemed connected to the sky. There was no line at all between them, no horizon. It was impossible to tell where exactly the rain and mist touched down except very close in, at the water's edge. The trees on either side seemed hung in shreds. He walked down to the water, stepping carefully on the wet rounded stones, and heard the rain everywhere, an even sheet of sound erasing all others. It was the only smell, too. Even when it smelled of land or sea, even when Roy caught the scents of what he imagined were ferns and nettles and rotten wood, they seemed only a part of the way the rain smelled. And he was realizing that this was what it would be like, mostly. The clear days they'd had were the oddity. This dense rain, and the world enclosed by it, was what they would know. This would be their home."
Yes, it's a depressing book, and yet still worth reading, especially the novella.
You've convinced me that this is a book I need to read. Thanks for reviewing it.
Posted by: Sandra | July 11, 2010 at 02:26 AM