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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Mar 2015, 272 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2016, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Rory L. Aronsky
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In crystalline, chiseled, yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her.
David Vann's dazzling debut Legend of a Suicide was reviewed in over a 150 major global publications, won 11 prizes worldwide, was on 40 "best books of the year" lists, and established its author as a literary master. Since then, Vann has delivered an exceptional body of work, receiving, among others, best foreign novel in France and Spain (France's Prix Medicis Etranger, Spain's Premi Llibreter), a California Book Award, and the mid-career St. Francis College Literary Prize. Aquarium, his implosive new book and first to be published by Grove, will take Vann to a wider audience than ever before.
Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother - a docker at the local container port - in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamored of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother toward a precipice of terrifying consequence.
In crystalline, chiseled yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her. Relentless and heartbreaking, primal and redemptive, Aquarium is a transporting story from one of the best American writers of our time.
I found him at the darkest tank, in a corner, alone, peering into what could have been a window to the stars, endless black and cold and only a few points of light. Hung in this void like a small constellation, the ghost pipefish, impossible.
Like a leaf giving birth to stars, I said, whispering, as if any sound might make the fish vanish.
Yes, the old man whispered back. Exactly that. I couldn't have said it better myself. Sometimes Ican't believe you're only twelve. You should become an ichthyologist. This is who you are.
Body of small green leaves, veined, very thin, its fins painted in light cast from elsewhere, but from his eye out his long snout, an eruption of galaxies without foreign source, born in the fish itself. An opening in the small fabric of the world, a place to fall into endlessly.
He's my favorite fish, I said, still whispering. I ask everyone what their favorite fish is, and I always hope they'll say the ghost pipefish.
Well he's my favorite...
Vann is aware and appreciative of his readers, and by allowing them moments to breathe, he makes his drama much more potent. In turn, the reader has the space to think more about it. Aquarium is utterly unforgettable.
(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
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A couple of thousand years B.C., the Chinese were building fish pens in lakes (for food and possibly entertainment), and evidence of Roman fish tanks in the sea still exist (such as the fish tank that can still be seen a little north of Rome). But building containers to showcase the fish away from their natural surroundings had many challenges that would remain largely insurmountable until the 19th century.
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The Roman Empire had aquariums of sorts - small marble tanks, stocked with such fish as the poisonous-spined sea barbel. Then, during the last century B.C. and first century A.D., glass manufacturing in Europe went through a number of major step changes, including the discovery...
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