Aquarium

His prose is as clear, fresh and invigorating as a starry winter night on an Aleutian mountainside, and his intriguing scenarios make his books easy to devour in a few urgent sittings

The Times

A stirring tale that isn’t as simple as it first appears.

Esquire

A blue-collar parable … [The character] looks back on her life as a child looks into a tank, hoping to make sense of the world inside – a theme that Vann develops beautifully, creating a mysterious realm of the wintry American city’

Guardian

Vann spins a powerful tale of guilt and resentment, steeped in the atmosphere of a bleak winter city

Mail on Sunday

Brilliant … Aquarium is as rich as good poetry and as addictive as a first-class detective novel

Spectator

Strangely beguiling … [Vann’s] writing echoes Faulkner’s in its feeling for the means by which children might uncannily echo their parents … he is responding to a genuine tendency that many children have, to shape the calls and responses and perceptions and stories according to their favourite animals … Aquarium offers a new direction for Vann’s writing, in which his characteristically unsparing eye for cruelty begins to consort with more lyrical voices.

Times Literary Supplement

A genuine departure for Vann, an authentically new direction … Its delicate, coming-of-age sensuality and bright saltwater menagerie … leaves more air and space for the reader … and it has a softer touch.

New York Times

Aquarium may be elegantly written and fiercely imagined, but it is also a beautiful book

Chicago Tribune

He is expert at showing the way that damaged, screwed-up adults inflict harm on children

Catherine O'Flynn