Caribou Island
David Vann, Harper, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-187572-4
People haunted by their own failures and lost dreams drive Vann's earnest but uneven first novel, which opens with Irene, an ailing middle-aged Alaskan woman, telling her grown daughter, Rhoda, about coming home and finding her mother "hanging from the rafters" one day when she was 10 years old. Irene also tells Rhoda that she believes her husband, Gary, wants to leave her. Gary, "a champion of regret," wanted to be an academic, but ekes out a living fishing and building boats while planning a self-imposed exile with Irene on an island in Alaska's Skilak Lake, where he's building a crude log cabin. Rhoda envisions marital bliss with her boyfriend, Jim, a philandering, selfish dentist. Their internal monologues rage with ideas and desires that read like authorial conceits, not the thoughts of real people. The only true character is Alaska itself, and Vann, author of the story collection Legend of a Suicide, is at his best depicting the harsh, rugged landscape of the Alaskan wilderness. (Jan.)
Details
Reviewed on: 11/01/2010
Genre: Fiction
Compact Disc - 978-1-4417-7171-1
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MP3 CD - 978-1-4417-7172-8
Other - 1 pages - 978-1-4417-7174-2
Other - 320 pages - 978-0-06-204233-0
Paperback - 320 pages - 978-0-06-187573-1
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