Legend of a Suicide: Powerful American Literature Short Stories of Family, Grief, and Loss in Alaska

David Vann's novella Sukkwan Island is a powerful piece of fiction that will leave the reader reeling. The story of a father and son, the writing is terse and unforgiving, and the story is unsparing in peeling back the layers of pain that enfold the characters. Vann has turned his own personal tragedy - the suicide of his own father - into a story that is truthful, wrenching and powerful. Sukkwan Island will stay with the reader long after he has put the book down, and will bear many future rereadings. This is one of the best pieces of contemporary fiction I have read in a long time because it speaks to the condition that men find themselves in - of trying to be good in a world that allows them to be bad and not answer for it. I highly recommend this book.

By reading first the short stories and afterwards the novella 'Sukkwan' Island I maybe disturbed the author's intention of the structure of this stunning book. To be honest, having done this I found the short stories well written, as good "designed and constructed" pieces of well taught creative writing. But slightly anecdotical. As mentioned elsewhere one could trace the influence of the mastership of Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver mastership and the more homely tragedies of Kevin Cantry. Still in 'Sukkwan Island' David Vann succeeds in reaching a higher, almost cinematographic level. Having seen the film 'Into the Wild' recently I could imagine the desolate atmosphere of Alaska better. Vann describes the state of mind of the father like Jean-Paul Sartre did in his novel La Nausée. (Disgust?) Furthermore the subject of suicide reminds another Existentialist thinker/writer Albert Camus who wrote suicide is the only free choice we have in our lives we did not choose for by ourselves. As an unmistakenly early 21st century masterpiece of American writing 'Sukkwan Island' could be the ultimate post-pioneer, post-Thoreau depiction of how the Americans finally lost touch with the wild they once were able to conquer. Nature bigger as mankind. Nature bigger as human mind.

You can't figure what an orphan feels. Only other ones can. Especially when your father committed suicide. A violent one at that. I am not sure I have the faintest idea of what the author wants to convey in reporting this story. All I can say I feel sorry for him.

This is a savage, gutsy probe of suicide and its aftermath. These allegorically linked stories, notably the middle novellas, bring the reader to a naked immediacy, a place where there is no escape and no room to sit on the perimeter. David Vann has re-imagined his father's suicide (thirty years ago, when Vann was 13) and mythologized it in this semi-autobiographical memoir, and he has done this with a graphic, naked brawn and authenticity that I have rarely encountered in other stories of suicide, real or imagined. There is a place beyond the threshold, a place where gifted writers access with the reader in the subconscious strata, a sort of "it" place, for lack of a signifier. And Vann meets the reader here with a staggering intensity. It produced a chemical reaction, and I was fully in that submerged dimension. Vann's influences are present, such as Cormac McCarthy (who also produces that chemical reaction in me), Elizabeth Bishop, and Chaucer, among others. But this is uniquely Vann's voice, an echo of his personal history, his education and beloved authors, with his own original stamp. Every passage is nuanced and muscular. There are also acrid scenes of Kafkaesque absurdity and graveyard insanity that blew me away. I read his later Caribou Island: A Novel before this one. There is a linked sensibility in both stories, and even some of the character's names are used in both books. They are fused or clipped or reinvented altogether, but it is evident that names are critical and symbolic to Vann. This book, in my humble opinion, is the best of the two, a legitimate masterpiece. (Although, now that I have read this, it gives more heft to the later work.) I was deeply moved and impressed by CARIBOU ISLAND and wanted to go back to this earlier work. LEGEND OF A SUICIDE is now one of my favorite books of the year, and would be on any list of mine of best books of a lifetime. Excuse my gushing and just read the book. I can tell you that the Alaskan wilderness will emerge as a character, that the eyes of the fish will both tyrannize and seduce you, that the barren coldness will incarcerate you. You will be hunted down and haunted. "He dreamed he was chopping up bits of fish and every piece had a small pair of eyes and as he chopped, there was a moaning sound that was getting louder. It wasn't coming from the pieces of fish or their eyes exactly, but they were watching him and waiting to see what he would do." I recommend this to anyone who wants a sublime reading experience.

This is a powerful set of semi-autobiographical stories dealing with the relationship of a father and his son, Roy. The stories are predominantly set in Alaska and Vann powerfully establishes such a stark and deep sense of place, evoking the vast and foreboding area of Alaska. Sukkwan Island is the longest story in this book and left me with mixed feelings. The first part of the story was remarkable and delivered a level of intensity and emotion that is as good as any writing I've recently read. Having come from a divorced family and a strained relationship with my father, this particular story hit home hard, especially the lack of communication and utterly strained interactions between Roy and his father. While not divulging any spoilers, the second part of Sukkwan Island was a letdown for me, mostly because I don't think the surprise Vann delivered was fully clear and even after rereading it several times, I felt it powerful writing but too much of a fork in the road of the overall story. Additionally, the first half of the book/stories worked a lot harder for me than the second half. I don't want to diminish the totality of this work since it is a fine piece of work, but the first half of the book works a lot harder than the second half. I really liked "Legend of a Suicide" quite a bit. In spite of my minor faults, this book delivers a tense and emotional rollercoaster ride of a dysfunctional father and the strained relationship with his son. Vann is a fresh literary face on the scene and well worth the investment of time.

Cuando el escritor David Vann tenía 13 años, su padre se suicidó. Este libro es la forma en la que parece que el autor trata de devolverle la vida de alguna manera. El libro se compone de cinco cuentos cortos y una novela aunque no en ese orden. Las historias están conectadas entre sí y describen la relación del joven Roy Fenn con su padre Jim, un dentista fallido y pescador fracasado, habla del amor incondicional del hijo hacia un padre mentalmente enfermo. Con una prosa magnífica -usa pocas y simples palabras- golpea directamente en el estómago de quien esté leyendo. Es una historia conmovedora, a veces divertida, a veces impactante, con giros inteligentes, dolorosa, desgarradora, increíblemente convincente y plausible y absolutamente absorbente. La descripción del padre enfermo, sus racionalizaciones y elecciones, es muy realista. Los procesos de pensamiento del hijo, Roy, también resultan descarnadamente auténticos. Es un libro difícil de leer emocionalmente, que me deja de regalo unas cuantas noches de insomnio e imágenes que no se me van a olvidar fácilmente. Me pasó también con The Road de Cormac McCarthy, libro al que ligeramente me recordó. Brillante. "A father, after all is a lot for a thing to be.”

Forget the hype. Forget the hoo-haa about whether this is a novel, a collection of short stories, a memoir - just read this extraordinary book. At its heart - emotional, structural, intellectual - is the eponymous novella, but either side of it straddle other versions of the central event in the narrator's life, the suicide of his father. Vann tells his tales - complementary, contradictory, always compelling - in prose that re-awakens your senses to the nuances of language and of fiction. The legend he tells is both rooted in the terrible detail of life and illuminated by moments of transcendental brilliance, of baby salmon creating a peacock's tail of fabulous, life-affirming moment. Vann cites Cormac McCarthay as an influence - and this is perhaps the most bleakly beautiful fiction since The Road - but his richly detailed courtship of language and myth is as in love with landscape as, say, Thomas Hardy. If all of this makes the book sound worthy and 'literary', let's state for the record that it is stay-up-late, page-turning. stomach-churningly immediate. I've certainly not read this year a book that I have felt so compelled to read and so sad - in every sense - to finish. Add to that a coup worthy of early Ian McEwan and you have a book that resonates with just about everything sense and sensibility you could want and that - despite the apparently gloomy subject - you will want to press upon family, friends and even strangers on the Tube. Amazing.

Terrific book, impossible to find in hard copy?? I like to share my good books, and this one will make the rounds. For me it was a rare window into men's emotions. I have a son the same age as young Roy in "Sukwan Island" and somehow I could see him. Book came on time from seller and in a very lightly used state just as described.

D'une écriture limpide et aussi froide que les paysages qui sont décrits, David Vann nous entraîne au cœur de l'horreur des pères qui veulent léguer leur impossibilité d'être à leurs fils.

Alles klar, warum 5 Sterne in Worte fassen? Fehlkonstruktion, nur nötig bei Kritik! Und nun sieben mal heiße Luft. So.