Imprint: Penguin
Published: 29/10/2009
ISBN: 9780141043784
Length: 240 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 15mm x 129mm
Weight: 170g
RRP: £8.99
Roy is still young when his father, a failed dentist and hapless fisherman, puts a .44 magnum to his head and commits suicide on the deck of his beloved boat. Throughout his life, Roy returns to that moment, gripped by its memory and the shadow it casts over his small-town boyhood, describing with poignant, mercurial wit his parents' woeful marriage and inevitable divorce, their kindnesses and weaknesses, the absurd and comic turning-points of his past. Finally, in Legend of a Suicide, Roy lays his father's ghost to rest. But not before he exacts a gruelling, exhilarating revenge.
Revolving around a fatally misconceived adventure deep in the wilderness of Alaska, this is a remarkably tender story of survival and disillusioned love.
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 29/10/2009
ISBN: 9780141043784
Length: 240 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 15mm x 129mm
Weight: 170g
RRP: £8.99
An extraordinary, ground-breaking piece of fiction ... Nothing quite like this book has been written before
A richly gifted newcomer
Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and genuine surprises
Oh my god, Legend of a Suicide just bowled me over completely. It is such a tender, heartbreaking, breathtaking, horrifying and insanely compelling read that when I finished it I went straight back to the beginning and round again. I implore anyone with functioning eyes to read this book
So hard to put down that I am thinking of suing David Vann for several hours of lost sleep
This book squeezes more life out of the first hundred pages than most books could manage in a thousand, which is pretty impressive, considering it's a book about death
In his portrayal of a young son's love for his lost father David Vann has created a stunning work of fiction: surprising, beautiful and intensely moving
One of the most gripping debuts I've ever read
Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget
An American classic ... harrowing but beautifully wrought ... prose as clear and bracing as a mountain stream