Dirt
PRAISE FOR DAVID VANN
PRH, PRH
'A piece of relentless, heartbreaking brilliance that bears comparison with Cormac McCarthy's The Road.' Weekend Australian (Legend of a Suicide)
PRH, PRH
'Like McCarthy's The Road, there were times when I wanted this brutal, honest novel to stop. Not to end but to stop, so I could catch my breath and put some distance between myself and Vann's desperate characters...In Caribou Island, Vann, who has turned his boyhood pain and confusion into a clear-eyed understanding of the human condition, has broadened his canvas and honoured his promise as one of the most exciting writers at work today.' Weekend Australian
PRH, PRH
'A novel as precise and unflinching as this makes other recently celebrated books seem melodramatic. Caribou Island proves that art wrought from personal pain and obsessed with negative emotion can still be profoundly positive.' Canberra Times
PRH, PRH
'Extraordinary...Vann has written something truly memorable, disturbing and heartbreaking.' Courier-Mail
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'Greatness has arrived.' Outside magazine
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'Like Melville, Faulkner, and McCarthy, Vann is already one of the great ones of American literature.' ABC (Spain)
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'One of the best writers of his generation.' Le Figaro (France)
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'Caribou Island gets to places other novels can't touch…Though it wears the clothes of realism—the beautiful exactness of the language, the unerring eye for detail—it takes us someplace darker, older, more powerful than the daylit world.' Kevin Canty, New York Times Book Review
PRH, PRH
'Vann has written a novel that breaks out of the autobiographical boundaries of his own grief and exposes our friable ties to those we love…Despite the crushing sorrow of Caribou Island, it progresses with tremendous momentum…[Vann] handles conflicted feelings of love and resentment, and the raw, existential cries of ordinary people, extraordinarily well. And although he's a graceful writer, he never spins the kind of poetic prose that infects too many literary novels with distracting prettiness. …For a few moments after this perfectly choreographed horror, it's impossible to say anything at all.' Ron Charles, Washington Post
PRH, PRH
'Moving, powerful…Vann's people are hurtling irretrievably toward a dark outcome, and while putting the book down might save you from it, you can't stop reading, just as you can't unlearn its truths.' Caitlin Roper, Los Angeles Times
PRH, PRH
'In this exceptional first novel by the celebrated author of Legend of a Suicide, an oncoming Alaska winter becomes metaphor as a troubled marriage moves implacably toward a bleak reckoning. Caribou Island is an unflinching portrait of bad faith and bad dreams.' Ron Rash, author of Serena
PRH, PRH
'Compelling. As the plot moves toward a gruesome finale, the reader is submerged in 'slow waves of pressure, water compacting but no edge to it.'' The New Yorker
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'Caribou Island is a beautiful, richly atmospheric if unsettling novel, and deserves to consolidate Vann's position among America's literary high flyers.' Melanie McGrath, London Evening Standard
PRH, PRH
'[Vann] has come fully into his own voice, from the striking opening scene to the fateful final sentence.... An oddly exhilarating horror story in which human demons spring from the smoke of their own disappointment and regret. Caribou Island earns Vann a seat beside the masters. A+' Sheerly Avni, San Francisco Magazine
PRH, PRH
'[Vann uses] American landscape as a metaphor to tremendous effect…Vann's brilliance as a writer lies in his willingness to expose everything… A writer to read and reread; a man to watch carefully.' Economist
PRH, PRH
'Stoic, immoveable, enduring, self-contained, tough.' Guardian
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'Everything that made Legend so absorbing, and rightly acclaimed, is here deepened and strengthened. . . . Caribou Island is a novel of fine artistry and stark emotional truth—full of our darkest currents and faintest sounds.' Tom Gatti, The Times
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