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Published Nov 2008
160 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Winner of the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction - In 'Ichthyology,' a young boy watches his father spiral from divorce to suicide. The story is told obliquely, often through the boy's observations of his tropical fish, yet also reveals his father's last desperate moves, including quitting dentistry for commercial fishing in the Bering Sea. Rhoda goes back to the beginning of the father's second marriage and the boy's fascination with his stepmother, who has one partially closed eye. This eye becomes a metaphor for the adult world the boy can't yet see into, including sexuality and despair, which feel like the key initiating elements of the father's eventual suicide. 'A Legend of Good Men' tells the story of the boy's life with his mother after his father s death through the series of men she dates. In 'Sukkwan Island,' an extraordinary novella, the father invites the boy homesteading for a year on a remote island in the southeastern Alaskan wilderness. As the situation spins out of control, the son witnesses his father's despair and takes matters into his own hands. In 'Ketchikan,' the boy is now thirty years old, searching for the origin of ruin. He tracks down Gloria, the woman his father first cheated with, and is left with the sense of a world held in place, as it turned out, by nothing at all. Set in Fairbanks, where the author's father actually killed himself, 'The Higher Blue' provides an epilogue to the collection.
"A well-crafted debut collection ... Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and genuine surprises, leading to a ghastly conclusion that's sure to linger." - Publishers Weekly
"Legend of a Suicide is a series of stories by David Vann, focusing on the collapse of paradise, following its protagonists as they deal with the life around them spiraling out of control and their relationships with the ones responsible. 'Legend of a Suicide' is thought provoking and will give readers much to relate too, making it a gripping read that won't be put down." - The Midwest Book Review
"David Vann's extraordinary and inventive set of fictional variations on his father's death will surely become an American classic." - The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"A powerful new voice has emerged in fiction." - Sunday Times (UK)
"Brilliant ... Vann's prose follows the sinews of Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, yet has its own nimble flex." - The Times (UK)
"Extraordinary... Reminiscent of Tobias Wolff, Vann's prose is as pure as a gulp of water from an Alaskan stream." - The Financial Times (UK)
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Mathieu Bourgois Agency
David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. He is an internationally bestselling author whose work has been translated into nineteen languages. He is the winner of fifteen prizes, including France's Prix Médicis étranger, Spain's Premi Llibreter, the Grace Paley Prize, a California Book Award, the AWP Nonfiction Prize, and France's Prix des lecteurs de L'Express. His books - Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, Dirt, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth - have appeared on seventy best books of the year lists in a dozen countries. He has written for the Atlantic, Esquire, Outside, Men's Journal, McSweeney's, the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, and many others, and he has appeared in documentaries for the BBC, Nova, ...
... Full Biography
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Link to David Vann's Website
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