Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

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A sad and heartbreakingly wise story about a lost father and a grieving son

David Vann takes a woeful theme - a hapless father's suicide, and his son's grief at his death - and works away at it with wry melancholy and brutal honesty. Roy's father Jim is a failed husband, a failed parent, a failed lover and a failed dentist. In an attempt to reconcile with his child, Jim takes Roy on an ill-prepared trip to the Alaskan wilderness to live off the land for a year. It is a hopeless endeavour, and with acuity of detail, Vann portrays Jim's mental deterioration and Roy's struggle to maintain a semblance of normality as things worsen around them. Jim cries at night, their food supplies are scant and the winter weather is closing in. Vann's description of the landscape is unsentimental; the vibrant and uneasy observations mirror the relationship between the powerless boy and his desolate father

(£7.99, Viking)

Review by Eithne Farry

Release date: Wednesday 30 September 2009

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