Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Caribou Island

by David Vann (Goodreads Author)

3.32 of 5 stars 3.32 · rating details · 1,178 ratings · 349 reviews

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unraveling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in he

...more

Hardcover, 293 pages

Published January 18th 2011 by Harper (first published 2010)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Beautiful Book Covers of 2011

211th out of 750 books — 3,792 voters

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,538)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jan 12, 2013 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Check out my interview with David Vann in August 2012 >>http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-david-vann/

While reading this story i am thinking of the story Revolutionary Road written by Richard Yates a tale of marriage and the destructive behaviors of the human heart displayed in that story. If you have seen the movie it is probably even more engrained in your mind the images of despair and the path the couple found themselves down. The pursuit of happiness its funny how we try to at...more Check out my interview with David Vann in August 2012 >>http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-david-vann/

While reading this story i am thinking of the story Revolutionary Road written by Richard Yates a tale of marriage and the destructive behaviors of the human heart displayed in that story. If you have seen the movie it is probably even more engrained in your mind the images of despair and the path the couple found themselves down. The pursuit of happiness its funny how we try to attain happiness. I recently watched Shadowlands a movie with Anthony Hopkins playing the role of the great writer C. S. Lewis taken from his real life account. He unexpectedly experiences love in the very last stages of the two and fro of a friendship he did not understand love before only until certain situations came about did he understand his path. That movie gave an example of a person caught in the pursuit of goals of splendor in academic and religious constrains away from more palpable feelings and rewards of love and companionship.

In this story, Caribou Island, the characters are faced with many obstacles and challenges of trust, lust or illness. The accommodation of the characters of this story on a beautiful and wonderfully described Alaskan island Caribou island brings about a chance and opportunity to test the waters of these characters' trust and love. They eventually experience a wake up call of sorts.

Illness and despair, when the clock is ticking and that sand in the hour glass runs on its last bead of sand we have a whole different outlook towards those around us.
Calamities can bring about change for the betterment of the parties involved.
In this story there a people who are either in love, want love, think they have love and possibly trust the untrustworthy.

It's seems the fate of one parent and the legacy she left behind has tainted the family and has cast upon them melancholy and a dark over hanging shadow like a black cloud that follows your footprints determined to pour on you cold rains that somehow magically wash away traits of hope.
This Alaskan environment proves to be a form of paralysis to some individuals and brings to fruition love and despair and is all acted out in this story of tragedy.

David Vann has successfully brought to the table a captivating, deep felt, meaningful human tragedy in a prose with wonderful descriptions of landscape coupled with memorable and heartfelt characters.

“My mother was not real. She was an early dream, a hope. She was a place. Snowy, like here, and cold. A wooden house on a hill above a river. An overcast day, the old white paint of the buildings made brighter somehow by the trapped light, and I was coming home from school. Ten years old, walking by myself, walking through dirty patches of snow in the yard, walking up to the narrow porch. I can’t remember how my thoughts went then, can’t remember who I was or what I felt like. All of that is gone, erased.”

“Above all else, Gary was an impatient man: impatient with the larger shape of his life, with who he was and what he’d done and become, impatient with his wife and children, and then, of course, impatient with all the little things, any action not done correctly, any moment of weather that was uncooperative. A general and abiding impatience she had lived in for over thirty years, an element she had breathed.”

“Gary was a champion at regret. Every day there was something, and this was perhaps what Irene liked least. Their entire lives second-guessed. The regret a living thing, a pool inside him.”

“To Monique, the best part about this place was the scenery: the high, lush mountains close along either side of the river, the short valleys dotted with wildflowers, the swampy areas dense with skunk cabbage, ferns, mosquitoes, and moose.”

“A world that shouldn’t exist, far away and untouchable. You could bring a crab up, but you couldn’t go down to them, couldn’t join. And this was the truth about Monique. He could have her for a short time, and his money could make it seem almost that he could fit into her world, but she was untouchable.”

“He didn’t understand marriage. The gradual denial of all one desired, the early death of self and possibility. The closing of a life prematurely. But this wasn’t true, he knew. It was only the way it seemed right now, during a bad time. Once Irene got better and returned to her old self, he’d feel differently.”

“The lives of plants like humans, full of struggle and domination, loss and dreams that never happened or happened only briefly. And that was the worst, to have something and then not have it, that was certainly the worst by far.”

Review also at http://more2read.com/review/caribou-island-by-david-vann/(less)

15 likes · like · see review

Feb 23, 2012 Jasmine marked it as to-read

I have finally become too self absorbed. I had a very bad moment today.

I was surfing goodreads and I did that thing where you see an ad while you are clicking to the next page but I just saw a name. I clicked back but I got a different ad. So I searched, was david vann who I thought he was? he was and he had a new book.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS I DOING THAT WAS SO IMPORTANT I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS?

So I immediately took my self down to the store with my poor impulse control and bought it (and the top...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 19, 2011 Will Byrnes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-of-the-year-2011, alaska, all-time-favorites-fiction, favorites

Caribou Island is a masterpiece. Set in the remote bleakness of water-soaked, small town Alaska, this is a tale of desperation, failure, of man-versus-nature but also of man so arrogant and self-involved, so removed from reality that he does not bother to properly prepare for the battle. Some hope is gleaned, some battles are won, but the war seen here is a dark, suffocating presence.

Alaska felt like the end of the world, a place of exile. Those who couldn’t fit anywhere else came here, and if

...more Caribou Island is a masterpiece. Set in the remote bleakness of water-soaked, small town Alaska, this is a tale of desperation, failure, of man-versus-nature but also of man so arrogant and self-involved, so removed from reality that he does not bother to properly prepare for the battle. Some hope is gleaned, some battles are won, but the war seen here is a dark, suffocating presence.

Alaska felt like the end of the world, a place of exile. Those who couldn’t fit anywhere else came here, and if they couldn’t cling to anything here, they just fell off the edge. These tiny towns in a great expanse, enclaves of despair.

Whereas most fiction floats atop a watery base of prose, Vann’s characters and story sit amidst a thick stew of imagery. His writing has the density, the economy of a short story. No event occurs that does not contribute to the underlying momentum, or to enhancing our understanding of the characters or their actions. Salmon thrashing about on the deck of a boat echo how his characters struggle to survive the travails of their lives. One even dreams of himself underwater with the hooked fish. The Alaskan environment is as much a character as the characters themselves. While it can be a beautiful landscape, and that is noted more than once, it is mostly harsh here, offering chill wind, rain, snow, cold, the harshness of the venue reflecting the harshness of the characters’ emotional states.

The water was no longer turquoise. A dark, dark blue today, with blackness in it, a clarity, no glacial silt suspended. Irene didn’t know it could change so completely in even a day. A different lake now. Another metaphor for itself, each new version refuting all previous.

Vann’s language is as unadorned as a block of Hubbard ice, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy, particularly in his frequent verb-free sentence constructions.

The primary actors in Caribou Island are a late-middle-aged couple, Gary and Irene. Gary is impulsive, controlling, a bully and a coward, who cannot ever see himself as being in the wrong. He wants to test his mettle by constructing a cabin on the shore of remote Caribou Island. Another character thinks about sailing a ship around the world, thus conjuring Robert Stone and Outerbridge Reach. Gary’s wife, Irene, desperately trying to save her marriage, reluctantly agrees to help, despite knowing that constructing this cabin is only another in a long history of follies. Their daughter, Rhoda, is a veterinarian’s assistant. She lives with, and expects to marry Jim, a dentist, who is going through a mid-life crisis. A sociopathic man-user rips through the scenery, leaving a trail of destruction, and a few minor characters are given lines. But their actions serve primarily to highlight the larger issues. Looming over all is Irene’s memory from age ten, when she found her mother, hanging.

What effect must that have had on such a young person? Vann ought to know. His own father took his life when Vann was thirteen. Irene carries that memory on her back like Jesus stumbling toward Calvary. Given Vann’s prior work, one must wonder if one or more of his characters will find their way to a similar a dark end.

But there is a route. There are reasons, challenges, revelations, lies, contemplations. Abandonment and isolation are prime here. Vann casts a laser light on how people manage to see past each other, how they miss chances to connect. He looks at how fear, whether of failure, or of being alone, can help cause the very things we most want to avoid. Even the sociopath is running from something. Vann shows how people can make each other invisible, whether consciously or not, and do so at their peril, and how their externalizing of internal issues and images impacts those around them. Are we doomed to repeat the crimes of our parents? Of our parents’ parents? Of forebears beyond counting?

The subject matter may be tough, but the journey is incredibly rich, the main characters well realized, the craft impressive. You will find yourself thinking about scenes from this book long after you have moved on to your next read. Vann is the real deal, and this is top notch literature. Climb into your leaky boat, brave the icy wind and squall-driven waves slapping at the sides of your craft and head over to Caribou Island . It is a memorable sojourn. And if this is not recognized as one of the best books of 2011, I will eat my copy.
(less)

29 likes · like · see review

Feb 20, 2011 TheGirlBytheSeaofCortez rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-authors, literary-fiction

Alaska felt like the end of the world, a place of exile. Those who couldn't fit anywhere else came here, and if they couldn't cling to anything here, they just fell off the edge. These tiny towns in a great expanse, enclaves of despair.

The sentence above, uttered by one of its characters, could summarize David Vann’s elegantly bleak debut novel, Caribou Island. (His previously published work, Legend of a Suicide, was a critically acclaimed collection of short stories.)

From the moment we meet Ire...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jan 31, 2011 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads-books, review-book

The writing is great but this novel is so bleak – the setting, the weather, the lives of the characters. Just bleak.

Anyway, in a small town in Alaska, there’s a woman who’s dissatisfied with her life. She has unexplained head pain but doesn’t feel her family believes her and medical tests show nothing. She’s unable to sleep and no amount of medication eases the pain.

Her husband has a goal, a dream, to build a cabin on Caribou Island and live there permanently. He’s driven to see it through and...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 01, 2012 Teresa Lukey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 4-stars, depressing, didn-t-see-that-coming, fiction, omg

I can surely see why this book does not have a higher average rating for the characters in this story are absolutely dreadful. Unlikable characters do make it difficult, for me, to rate a book, but the shock value at the end of the book really gave it an extra boost, something akin to Rebecca.

This is a story of Gary and Irene, a married couple, whose relationship has gone rancid. The couple struggles to get along with each other through the humdrum of their day-to-day activities, but they have l...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2011 Isabelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Just won this book as a FirstRead. Will review it as soon as I read it! Thanks!
__________________________________________________________________________-

I was so torn as I was rating the book. I really didn't empathize with the characters and their stories. To be quite honest, I thought it was long and tedious. But the end, the last 5-6 pages were amazing! And the book cover is really pretty too (it should count!). So I rated it a 3 stars (an "I liked it"), but if a friend would ask me if she\h...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 30, 2013 A-bookworm rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

David Vann uses no quotation marks throughout this bleak depressing read. Is his refusal to use quotation marks supposed to be some new "Style" of writing, like texting? Why not just throw out all punctuation? We could all write in one long rambling paragraph. Eventually we could even leave out the spacing between words. I HATE what is being done to literature by those too lazy, or too unlearned, to write properly.

Vann's imagination is just so bleak, so depressing, he should see a doctor. He ob...more

like · see review

Mar 15, 2013 Jo Case rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel

Isaiah Berlin once divided writers into hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of one defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a variety of experiences and ideas. (Proust was a hedgehog, Shakespeare was a fox.) It’s rather early in David Vann’s literary career to be making broad pronouncements, but so far he’s displaying distinct hedgehog characteristics – as did Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road), who Vann echoes in his precise mapping of the dreams and neuroses of middle-class America.

Van...more Isaiah Berlin once divided writers into hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of one defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a variety of experiences and ideas. (Proust was a hedgehog, Shakespeare was a fox.) It’s rather early in David Vann’s literary career to be making broad pronouncements, but so far he’s displaying distinct hedgehog characteristics – as did Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road), who Vann echoes in his precise mapping of the dreams and neuroses of middle-class America.

Vann’s two works of fiction, the much-praised Legend of a Suicide (2008) and now his debut novel, Caribou Island, tell very different stories, but share several unifying themes – and recurring (if altered) characters. Legend of a Suicide explored the real-life suicide of Vann’s father (when the author was just thirteen) in a series of interconnecting stories, each taking different, often wildly contradictory, perspectives on events. Caribou Island is essentially a psychological thriller about marriage, but opens with one of the main characters, Irene, recalling her mother’s suicide when she was a child, an episode that casts a warning shadow over events to come. And the dramatic setting of the Alaskan wilderness – America’s last frontier – is integral to both works, acting both as a mirror in which the characters see their emotional lives reflected and an active agent in the way events unfold.

“If you wanted to be a fool and test the limits of how bad things could get, this was a good place for it,” reflects Irene, as she and husband Gary brave a raging storm to deliver materials to the uninhabited island where they plan to live out their retirement in a self-built cabin. For terminally unsatisfied Gary, it’s his last chance to realise the “authentic” Alaskan experience he’s been pursuing for years, some kind of immaculate fusion of environment and self. For Irene, it’s the latest in a long series of ill-conceived “impossible projects” she’s suffered the fall-out from; Gary views her concerns as a galling “lack of faith”. Her greatest fear, as she senses him moving away from her, is being left loveless and alone, as she was when her mother died.

Gary and Irene’s multi-layered tussle is juxtaposed with the lives of three other couples. The most integral of these is attentive daughter Rhoda and her live-in partner Jim, a wealthy dentist who she hopes to marry. Rhoda’s daydreams focus on a wedding in sunny Hawaii, but Jim fantasises about “great sex” with glamorous young backpacker Monique, who he vigorously pursues, despite her hapless boyfriend Carl (who Rhoda astutely assesses as “out of his league”). Disaster of varying degrees looms for all three couples – and each character is felled by their own particular weakness, and their failure to recognise or accept the gap between their imagined ideal and reality. Interestingly, the least idealistic character, Rhoda’s dope-smoking fisherman brother, seems the most content with his life and relationship. (“Your idea that you’ve deserved more than you’ve gotten, that’s the problem,” Irene tells Gary.)

This is that rare, delectable novel – equally driven by character and plot, which are expertly interwoven so that each feeds the other. The dark subject matter doesn’t stop it from being entertaining, either; Vann tells his story with layered observation and slivers of unselfconscious introspection, both of which often catch the characters in unintentionally humorous (and deeply telling) moments. For example, as Jim watches Monique, thinking that “even her posture showed class”, she says, “I’ve never been paid for sex”, brilliantly demonstrating the shallowness of his perception. Still more impressively, it’s replete with exquisite landscape writing that is never dull: it always has a purpose beyond mere description, telling us something about the characters or the action. Throughout the novel, its characters, events and landscape work together to build a visceral, finely paced dramatic tension.

As in Legend of a Suicide, Vann tells a psychologically complex story through competing narratives and perspectives – as in life, the reader’s sympathies and assessments shift depending on which character they’re spending time with, and the game of figuring out just where the “real” story lies is part of the allure. These narrators are unreliable in the truest sense – the most intriguing threads to unravel lie in the unpleasant truths they keep from themselves.

This review was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011.
(less)

like · see review

Feb 24, 2013 Linda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Vann is a great writer. Caribou Island’s characters weave into Alaska’s harsh and beautiful landscape. Gary and Irene are middle-aged, married, and fed up with each other. Gary decides to build a cabin on Caribou Island for retirement. They already have a nice home with electricity and plumbing, but he’s determined to face a winters in the wilderness. Irene believes the cabin is meant to drive her away.

Their daughter, Rhoda, is engaged to Jim. He cheats on Rhoda and only proposes because she’s...more

like · see review

Feb 23, 2013 Rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I grabbed this book after seeing a 1-star rating from a friend I follow here. I should have trusted her rating but I read through a few other reviews and was intrigued by what some call the 'gothic' nature of the ending. And I do enjoy books set in Alaska.

I liked how the author portrayed Alaska in this book. Amidst all it's beauty, it's a brutal and unforgiving state. I felt the cold almost seeping from the pages. I also liked his writing style. Others have lamented that there were no quotation...more I grabbed this book after seeing a 1-star rating from a friend I follow here. I should have trusted her rating but I read through a few other reviews and was intrigued by what some call the 'gothic' nature of the ending. And I do enjoy books set in Alaska.

I liked how the author portrayed Alaska in this book. Amidst all it's beauty, it's a brutal and unforgiving state. I felt the cold almost seeping from the pages. I also liked his writing style. Others have lamented that there were no quotation marks in the book but that didn't bother me. I had no problem knowing who was speaking or knowing when it was a character's thoughts instead.

What I didn't like were the characters. This is the second book that I've read recently where I had no connection, no sympathy, no tolerance for the characters (the other was Gone Girl). Perhaps this was the author's intent to keep you from choosing sides and to make the story of the deteriorating relationship plausible in the reader's mind? But I find that I have difficulty enjoying a book unless there is some connection to at least one character. I also didn't really believe the story...that the husband refused to acknowledge the entire time that his 'cabin' was a failure and there was no way they'd be able to endure a winter in it (presumably because he didn't want to give his wife the satisfaction?). I didn't believe that the wife would go along with all that, especially in the midst of her (real? imagined?) pain...presumably because she didn't want to leave him and didn't want him to leave her despite the fact that they despised each other?? The other characters -- the kids and their uninteresting lives (and the requisite affair of middle-aged man with younger woman) -- were just part of the story I had to wade through to get back to the parents.

Unlike others, I didn't have a problem with the ending. I certainly wouldn't call it Gothic (or maybe my definition is just different than others) and surprisingly I wouldn't even have called it brutal. I think the author may have been going for the shock value but for me, it just seemed like what had to happen. Perhaps my indifference was because I didn't care what happened to the characters...or because I feel, through his character development, that the author almost locked himself into an ending like this from the very beginning. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Jan 28, 2013 David Becker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well, on the plus side...this book will make you feel better about your own relationships, no matter how troubled they might be.

Seriously, Vann has created one of the most f'ed-up couples in literature with Gary and Irene, the main characters of this novel. They've been living in Alaska for three decades, slowly perfecting their skills at being unhappy, particularly around each other. Now they're retired, and Gary has the brilliant idea of building a crappy, too-small cabin on an uninhabited isl...more

like · see review

Jan 12, 2013 Lisa Hall rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lisa by: Goodreads

A portrait of desolation, violence, and the darkness of the soul; it is an explosive novel that made me cringe more than once. However despite the flinching, immediately after finishing the last sentence, I wanted to explore in greater detail the author's thoughts on suicide as well as the intrigue of cold isolation that's the novel's Alaskan setting.

Mr. Vann previously wrote an acclaimed collection of short stories titled "Legend of a Suicide" that one suspects are a cathartic way to reason th...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 07, 2012 Katie added it

Some of my all time favorite books never fail to make me cry: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, for example, I've read it more than a dozen times and I always choke up at one particular part of the story. More recently The Dog Stars, all I have to do is think about it and my eyes well up and I need a hug. Some of my all time favorite books make me feel like i have visited the literary equivelent of the Grand Canyon, impossibly beautiful, profound, Let The Great World Spin, The Tiger's Wife, Cold Mountai...more

like · see review

Aug 18, 2012 Vic rated it 3 of 5 stars

Spoiler alert: The following discusses plot and characters.

Every character in this story is fundamentally flawed and pretty unlikeable. The most likeable is Irene, the wife of an emotionally stunt man who emotionally abuses her and blames her for all of his many failures. But, she is not strong enough to get out, basically knowing she is living in hell. She ends up killing her husband and herself. In her suicide, she is repeating for her daughter the horror of finding her mother hanging. And thi...more

like · see review

Jun 11, 2012 Judith rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was such a fascinating story and so well told. I have been to Alaska only once, and only on a cruise. Yet the descriptions of the land, the people, and the food all felt so real that I was transported. I felt that I lived there and shared the story with these characters.

This book follows the lives of 4 couples living very different lives in Alaska, and each person's story is told from their own perspective as well as the other characters' viewpoints, so there is a lot of depth to the narra...more This was such a fascinating story and so well told. I have been to Alaska only once, and only on a cruise. Yet the descriptions of the land, the people, and the food all felt so real that I was transported. I felt that I lived there and shared the story with these characters.

This book follows the lives of 4 couples living very different lives in Alaska, and each person's story is told from their own perspective as well as the other characters' viewpoints, so there is a lot of depth to the narrative. So much of it is funny and light-hearted that the end came as a big shock to me. It's not that I doubt the authenticity of the end, it's just that it seems too heavy for the rest of the book. If they ever made this book into a movie, it would definitely have either a different ending or it would be some kind of odd Coen brothers creation. (Fargo, etc.)

Irene and Gary, married 30 years are undergoing a quiet crisis in their marriage. They live on the edge of the wilderness as it is, and yet Gary insists they need to build a cabin on Caribou Island to get away from it all. So they take a boat across this freezing lake and by hand, drag logs one at a time and nail them together in freezing wind, rain, and snow to build what amounts to a poorly constructed shed, all the while camping out in tents next to their construction project. Meanwhile, Irene develops debilitating headaches which cause her to spend all her time writhing in pain and trying to get sympathy from her obtuse husband. And still she is out there building this cabin every moment she is not curled up in a fetal position in her tent.

Their adult children are Rhoda, a nice vet, engaged to Jim, a boring dentist; and Mark, a strung out fisherman, who lives with Karen, a strung out barista. Mark and Karen meet Carl and Monique, two backpacking tourists visiting Alaska. The aspect of the story that fascinated me so much was the depiction of couples' relationships at every stage: the 30-year married wondering if their lives were entirely ruined by their relationship choices; the engaged couple's questioning why they are getting married; the young druggies who are just together without question because it feels good; and the travelers whose relationship unravels completely because every man who sees Monique wants to have sex with her.

Here's Jim contemplating his life: "The question, really, was what his life was about. He didn't believe in God, and he wasn't in the right field to become famous or powerful. Those were the three biggies: faith, fame, and power.They could justify a life, perhaps, or at least make you think your life meant something. All that crap about being a good guy, treating people well, and spending time with family was only crap because it had nothing to anchor it. There was no cosmic scorecard. Having kids seemed to work for some people, but not really. They were lying because they'd lost their lives and it was too late. And money, by itself, didn't mean anything. So all that was left was sex, and money could help with that." Priceless.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

May 23, 2012 Tim Chamberlain rated it 4 of 5 stars

Debut novelist David Vann explores dark and dangerous emotional territory in his first full-length effort, Caribou Island. Set in the wildnerness of Alaska, Caribou Island is the story of a failing marriage between the recently retired and ailing Irene and her husband Gary, a failed academic that has scraped by on fishing and boat-building for the past 30 years.

A word of warning: do not expect cuddly characters or easily-resolved storylines in Caribou Island. This is a tale of lives and relatio...more Debut novelist David Vann explores dark and dangerous emotional territory in his first full-length effort, Caribou Island. Set in the wildnerness of Alaska, Caribou Island is the story of a failing marriage between the recently retired and ailing Irene and her husband Gary, a failed academic that has scraped by on fishing and boat-building for the past 30 years.

A word of warning: do not expect cuddly characters or easily-resolved storylines in Caribou Island. This is a tale of lives and relationships unravelling, and Vann digs in and exposes his characters’ emotions as if he were dissecting a frog. Regret, disappointment, loneliness and anger are nearly palpable throughout the book (interspersed with a few tender and funny moments), making the conclusion a somewhat cathartic experience.

The novel opens with Irene telling her adult daughter Rhoda about the day when, as a child, she found that Rhoda’s grandmother had hanged herself. The shadow of the suicide follows Irene throughout her life. She fears being abandoned again, and this only contributes to her fear that Gary plans to leave her after all this time.

While there are several parallel stories, Irene is the emotional center of the book. She has come to understand that her relationship with her husband has changed in major ways over the years, unwelcome ways. She is lonely, and she is resentful of a husband that increasingly ignores her. The desire to reconnect is there, but she realizes that they are not the same people that first moved to Alaska 30 years before, making reconnection impossible.

While Irene is haunted by the suicide of her mother and her rapidly deteriorating relationship, her husband Gary is doggedly attempting to build the cabin he has dreamed of on the remote Caribou Island, accessible only by boat. This move will seemingly satisfy his decades-long obsession with further isolation, as moving Irene from a university town in California to a remote lake in Alaska decades before wasn’t already isolating enough. His continuing need for further isolation seems to reinforce Irene’s fear that he will eventually leave her.

Gary’s lonesome cabin project is a not-so-veiled metaphor for his and Irene’s entire life together. He has always had grand plans that never seem to bear much fruit, and Irene always finds herself in the role of helping Gary with his plans while keeping a stiff upper lip. Recurring failure has marked Gary’s entire adult life, something that has left him full of regret and growing ever more distant from his wife. The tension between Irene and Gary builds throughout the construction of the cabin, until it feels as unbearable to the reader as it does to the characters.

Though Vann spends a lot of time in his character’s heads and hearts, he really shines when describing his native Alaska. It is obvious that he has a deep love for the wilderness he grew up in, and his writing evokes both the beauty and the danger inherent in the landscape.

Released in January 2011, Caribou Island is David Vann’s first novel. He is also the author of Legends of a Suicide, a collection of short stories centering on an Alaskan man’s suicide. Vann’s own father committed suicide when Vann was 13, and these stories are a fictionalized examination of this part of his life. He also has an upcoming nonfiction release, Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU Shooter, Steve Kazmeirczak, due out later in 2011. (less)

like · see review

Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

Many people think of Alaska as wildness with great open spaces in a mountainous wildernous with sub-arctic cold, dark and long winters, ever-light summers, bears and moose. This is not the Alaska of David Vann. His Alaska consists of what sounds like an area most likely the Tongass National Rain Forest. This is the northernmost rainforest on earth, and it extends into southeast Alaska. Trees here are huge but grow close together here much like in the Amazon. It rains up to 400 inches a year in t...more Many people think of Alaska as wildness with great open spaces in a mountainous wildernous with sub-arctic cold, dark and long winters, ever-light summers, bears and moose. This is not the Alaska of David Vann. His Alaska consists of what sounds like an area most likely the Tongass National Rain Forest. This is the northernmost rainforest on earth, and it extends into southeast Alaska. Trees here are huge but grow close together here much like in the Amazon. It rains up to 400 inches a year in this part of Alaska and the days are often dark and dismal with damp that cuts right through you. There is no vista in this forest; all you have are the trees that hem you in.

It is in this Alaska that Gary and Irene realize that their marriage is falling apart, that they go through the motions of one last try at redeeming their moribund marriage. They decide to build a cabin on Caribou Island, a place both isolated and isolating. Gary has no coherent plans and their cabin ends up as a bunch of sticks stuck together every which way with huge gaps everywhere. The elements are not kept out and the rain, snow and wind wails through the cabin even as the last nail is hammered crookedly in.

Irene blames Gary for her life, for not having fulfilled what she might have been without him, and Gary blames Irene for his life's failures as well. Once he was a promising dissertation student at University of California Berkeley. Now he goes from ill-conceived project to ill-conceived project, each one failing and losing money. Irene was once a happy hippy chick who now goes weeks with horrific pain in her head for which doctors can find no source. They have two children, Mark and Rhoda. Mark is barely in their lives but Rhoda has a dream of helping them find salvation with each other.

Irene is the survivor of her mother's suicide. Her father was cheating and her mother decided to take her own life instead of living for Irene. Rhoda is on the verge of marrying a dentist who has already begun to cheat on her during their engagement. He has things all planned out. He'll keep switching receptionists, having affairs with them and then letting them go. It sounds like Rhoda is heading for the same train wreck as her mother and grandmother - a distant marriage and an unfaithful husband. Many of these themes appear in Vann's brilliant first book, Legend of a Suicide.

Caribou Island has many of the same themes as Legend of a Suicide - the inability to find intimacy with others, the desire to hurt those we try to love, and not knowing how to do things right in our own lives and for others. This book is not for the weak-hearted. It is bold and brutal, never a syrupy sentence or a hi-jinks kinda laugh. It is as serious as the death of a loved one. Even aspects of the book such as boat rides take on a dire nature and I had to wonder what awful thing would come next.

This is a reader's book. It is a book for people who love to read and it is why we read. It is one of the best books I have read this year and it knocked my socks off. More importantly, it changed how I see the world. It is THAT good.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Nov 17, 2011 Kristina rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, library-book, psychological-thriller

Eh. I thought I was going to need some happy fluff reading after finishing Joan Didion's Blue Nights, but that book was no where near as depressing as this book. Also, I found her book raw and fascinating and actually had something to say. I really didn't get anything out of this book except that I don't ever want to work in a canning factory, but I kinda already knew that. Everyone in this book is miserable, except maybe Mark and his girlfriend and that's probably because they spend most of the...more Eh. I thought I was going to need some happy fluff reading after finishing Joan Didion's Blue Nights, but that book was no where near as depressing as this book. Also, I found her book raw and fascinating and actually had something to say. I really didn't get anything out of this book except that I don't ever want to work in a canning factory, but I kinda already knew that. Everyone in this book is miserable, except maybe Mark and his girlfriend and that's probably because they spend most of their time being high and not paying attention to anything that goes on around them. I wasn't affected by any of the characters and was not all surprised by the ending. Mostly I thought this book was boring and repetitive, colorless and drab. The marriage between Gary and Irene seems to be extremely unhappy and you have to wonder why the hell they are still together and why the hell she is helping him build this ridiculous cabin on an island less than five miles from her cozy house. Pointless. This seems to me to be the worst kind of literary novel, the ones I particularly dislike--the more miserable and depressing it is, the more meaningful it is. Of course the cabin is a symbol and Monique (who I thought was a completely useless character) is a symbol, blah blah blah. I think a novel should tell a story & have something to say and not exist just to be interpreted through symbols. There is not one redeeming character in this miserable novel. If you read the first 50 pages, there's no reason to read the other 150 or so. Not much changes. I actually figured they'd all end up killing themselves at the end so I guess I wasn't too far off considering how it did end. I just wasn't interested in any of the characters because there was nothing to be interested in. I eventually had to skim the indepth descriptions of Gary and Irene building the cabin because I didn't care and the descriptions of Carl's job at the cannery because I didn't care about that and didn't feel it added anything to my reading experience. I guess this was also supposed to be an outdoorsy book but I didn't really get a feeling of nature or even of Alaska by reading this book. I actually had a negative view of Alaska while reading this book due to the depressive nature of the book and the state being described as a "dump" by at least one character. Now that I've finished this book I'm going to have to read a bunch of fluff because even if fluff doesn't have symbolism, at least it's entertaining. (less)

like · see review

Oct 24, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting and a bit different from the books I've read most recently. I was quite surprised by the ending, but perhaps I should have seen it coming. I was left wanting to know a lot more about the characters in the book, and it seemed like this was just a segment of a much longer and larger storyline. The descriptions of places in the book are supposedly fictional but it somehow felt as if you were there, without a lot of actual description. Perhaps that could be because the story takes place...more

like · see review

Oct 16, 2011 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I spent a good part of my boyhood in Alaska. However contradictory it may seem on the surface, there is a deep tension in Alaska between the vastness of the landscape and the terrible psychological claustrophobia life in that landscape can produce. Those of us who have lived in Alaska often speak of "cabin fever," a kind of madness induced by long hours trapped inside, which can, and every year does in a few cases, lead to madness, mayhem, and even murder. The young Alaskan novelist David Vann,...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 03, 2011 Lydia Presley rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, dark-fiction, fiction, contemporary

This book is .. there is no single word to describe it. Some words that come close are:

Bleak
Cold
Aching
Void
I was unprepared for the heavy, depressive feel of the story and, thinking back on it, I should have been prepared. The cover is dark, the setting is not known for it's warmth (thus inspiring feelings of joy), and, although I felt my mood descending with each page read, I couldn't tear my eyes or my thoughts away from the train-wreck of a story the people in Caribou Island were living.

I foun...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 09, 2011 Jeni rated it 2 of 5 stars

Caribou Island begins on a somber note. One of the main characters describes finding her mother dead, having hanged herself. Nevertheless, I managed to find the tone of the book in the first 60 pages or so innocuous, at times even lightly comic. I thought Irene's melodramatic response to her headaches and Gary's shoddy materials and unrealistic plans for his cabin somewhat farcical and amusing.

Either I wasn't paying attention during the beginning pages or the novel's tone is uneven at the outset...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 12, 2011 Colleen Henderson rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was awful. The characters are poorly delineated, and as a consequence they lack depth and emotional richness. The story line had potential, but was not fully developed - there were too many questions left unanswered. Was the main character traumatized by childhood events, or was she driven to despair by a cold, thoughtless husband and children that were very self absorbed? I kept reading because I kept hoping somehow the book would get better and the author would pull it all together,...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 15, 2011 Lisa rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 05, 2011 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: other-fiction

The day before "Caribou Island" hit the top of my pile, a friend warned me off reading it. "Unexceptional ... doesn't have the colour I think you respond to" were her words. My wife then warned me off "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", saying it "read like a dissertation--history, not story". My wife's caution hit the mark: I thought it was a story with a narrator and characters, not an impersonal recitation of history, so it's going back to the library tomorrow.

"Caribou Island", however, I enjoye...more The day before "Caribou Island" hit the top of my pile, a friend warned me off reading it. "Unexceptional ... doesn't have the colour I think you respond to" were her words. My wife then warned me off "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", saying it "read like a dissertation--history, not story". My wife's caution hit the mark: I thought it was a story with a narrator and characters, not an impersonal recitation of history, so it's going back to the library tomorrow.

"Caribou Island", however, I enjoyed. I struggle to say that is an endorsement that you should read the book, because so rarely have I felt so personal a response to a book. I can see how my friend was unimpressed--Vann's style is unadorned, action is slow, and it's not a light fun read. What I took, I took because the protrusions of the book's characters fit the recesses of my life's shape.

I say "not fun" because every character in the book is flawed. The least fucked-up is an incidental character, gone before you know it. The novel is built on crumbling relationships: father and mother being torn apart by the father's Quixotic quest to build a cabin on the unfriendly shores of an Alaskan lake, and their kids: their daughter who is about to settle down with a dentist, their son who is a stoner fisherman.

And through it all, the cloying and oppressive presence of Alaska. Wind and snow on lakes and mountains, gravel roads, the heavy weight of the approaching winter, the sensations of being cold and wet and wind-chilled. Beyond the physical, the spiritual presence of Alaska, where everyone's a fuckup and all the good people have left.

Within this environment of despair, the crumbling relationships decay before your eyes with a sense of inevitability. Poisonous conversation follows interior resentment follows bad decision until you can easily believe that nothing can ever go right for these people here in this place.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it is. Vann wrote about a similar situation: suicides, Alaska, failed father with heavy burden of inadequacy, resentful separating couples, and more in his previous book of short stories. They're semi-autobiographical, but I hope that Vann's next book is not also about suicides. It feels a little like being in someone else's therapy session, and now he's gone twice to the well I hope he won't return.

As with the earlier book, I identified with the father, flaws and all. I recognized the mother. I could see how I could have been the dentist. This is the personal response I talked about earlier: the characters were credibly flawed, I felt like I'd met those fuckups or could easily *be* those fuckups. I learned about myself by reading about them. I can't guarantee you will learn about yourself in Caribou Island, but I can guarantee it will cure you of wanting to move to Alaska.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 03, 2011 CoffeeBook Chick rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure what it is. But when a book is written without quotation marks around the dialogue, it just seems to make an already sad and depressing book even more so.

Now in their fifties, Gary and Irene have come to the conclusion that the unhappiness in life is totally the other person's fault, not their own. After thirty years of marriage and living in Alaska, Gary now has an obsession to build a one room cabin on Caribou Island, and Irene is supposed to help. No matter what, he will finish t...more I'm not sure what it is. But when a book is written without quotation marks around the dialogue, it just seems to make an already sad and depressing book even more so.

Now in their fifties, Gary and Irene have come to the conclusion that the unhappiness in life is totally the other person's fault, not their own. After thirty years of marriage and living in Alaska, Gary now has an obsession to build a one room cabin on Caribou Island, and Irene is supposed to help. No matter what, he will finish this cabin, even though Irene's truthful complaints of pulse-pounding headaches causing her to rest for hours at a time, have them visiting doctors to uncover a medical reason. Constant rain seems to pelt on them throughout the book as they work on the cabin, with arguments and deep despair building within them as each internally review the way their lives have turned out.

And their children. Mark is the son who feels fulfilled (at least on the surface) to live by day as a fisherman in Alaska, and by night completely high on drugs. Rhoda is the daughter who is missing something in her life, and could perhaps be doomed to repeat her mother's mistakes. Living with Jim, a dentist, Rhoda doesn't know that Jim is just now realizing that if he does things right, he can probably get away with adultery for the rest of his life.

Here's what's brilliant and realistic about this book: Although each character is disappointed, they also feel a closeness to the person they blame. They don't strictly hate each other, to a certain extent - while at one moment Gary may be ready to leave Irene forever, he still will lay down on the bed with her and hold her lovingly. There is a tenderness even though each of them are wondering if it's too late to make their life different.

This is not a book to cheer you up. Effortlessly written, page after page sharing genuine insight into a life shaped with regret and "what if," David Vann builds an eerily quiet novel to shocking, and yet silent, conclusions. A quick read, it is disturbing, authentic, and frighteningly brilliant.

Read this when you don't mind feeling a little sad and wondering if you'll be able to correct any bad choices you've made in life...(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 25, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio-books-read

Gary and Irene are a unhappily married couple of 30 plus years. Their marriage in unraveling, now that their two children, Rhoda and Mark, are grown. Gary, is obsessed about building a cabin from scratch on a remote island in Alaska, believing that living off the land will bring him the joy that he has long searched for. Gary is a bitter, angry man with unfulfilled dreams, all of which he blames on his wife Irene. He claims she is the reason he never completed his dissertation in Medieval Studie...more Gary and Irene are a unhappily married couple of 30 plus years. Their marriage in unraveling, now that their two children, Rhoda and Mark, are grown. Gary, is obsessed about building a cabin from scratch on a remote island in Alaska, believing that living off the land will bring him the joy that he has long searched for. Gary is a bitter, angry man with unfulfilled dreams, all of which he blames on his wife Irene. He claims she is the reason he never completed his dissertation in Medieval Studies, and never became a professor. Instead he went along with her idea of a family, and spent much of their marriage supporting the family by fishing and boat building.

Irene, a former teacher knows better. She sees Gary's latest project as just another one of many that will end in failure. She thinks of this idea as "his idiot project -- a 16x12 unheated cabin in the woods". Irene goes along with the idea grudgingly. She even helps him haul supplies to take over by boat, and haul logs for the cabin in the pouring rain. Irene even suspects that the cabin is Gary's first step to leaving her.

The first paragraph of this debut novel sets the bleak tone for the entire book, and it packs a wallop, as Irene is speaking to her daughter Rhoda.

"My mother was not real. She was an early dream, a hope. She was a place. Snowy, like here, and cold. A wooden house on a hill above a river. An overcast day, the old white paint of the buildings made brighter somehow by the trapped light, and I was coming home from school. Ten years old, walking by myself, walking through dirty patches of snow in the yard, walking up to the narrow porch. I can't remember how my thoughts went then, can't remember who I was or what I felt like. All of that is gone, erased. I opened our front door and found my mother hanging from the rafters. I'm sorry, I said, and I stepped back and closed the door. I was outside on the porch again".

As winter approaches, the cabin is incomplete, Irene becomes ill with severe headaches and other unspecified ailments, and the couple's dislike for one another seems to intensify. Their adult children Rhoda and Mark have their own issues as well. From the very first paragraph, I was confident that this book would end in disaster, and it did. The men are intensely unlikeable in this novel. Gary takes responsibility for nothing. He blames all of his misery on his wife, and their son is a lazy misfit. The women in this novel made me angry as well; they are weak and pathetic. No one learns a thing about themselves after all that has happened to them either. I had a love/hate relationship with this book. The writing was very very good, and the sense of place was chilling and well established. I loved the way that suspense was building throughout. Yet, I disliked all of the characters -- they were their own worst enemies.

The audio book was read by Bronson Pinchot who did a great job, but because the tone of the novel was so depressing, listening to the audio got to be a bit much at times, so I switched to the print version after a while. Do I recommend this book? Yes, but with reservations -- not a book to read if you are feeling a bit depressed. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 22, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a richly absorbing and dark, domestic drama that combines the natural, icy world of the Alaska frontier with a story of deceptive love and betrayal. If Steinbeck and Hemingway married the best of Anita Shreve, you would get David Vann's Caribou Island. His prose is terse and the characterizations are subtle, but knifing. His characters are saturated with loneliness and disconnection with their lives, with each other, in a pit of misperception, despair and exile, in a conflict of selves t...more

5 likes · like · see review

Feb 10, 2011 David Hebblethwaite rated it 4 of 5 stars

It’s always great to have a book come out of nowhere and surprise you: when I read David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide in 2009, I knew nothing about it or its author (probably wouldn’t have read it at all had I not won a copy in a competition) – and was in no way prepared for it to blow me away as it did. Of course, the flipside of this is that the same level of surprise isn’t possible when it comes to reading something else by the same author, and that will almost inevitably have an effect on how...more It’s always great to have a book come out of nowhere and surprise you: when I read David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide in 2009, I knew nothing about it or its author (probably wouldn’t have read it at all had I not won a copy in a competition) – and was in no way prepared for it to blow me away as it did. Of course, the flipside of this is that the same level of surprise isn’t possible when it comes to reading something else by the same author, and that will almost inevitably have an effect on how one reacts to that new work. So, when I say that Caribou Island – Vann’s latest book, and his first novel – didn’t have quite the same impact as Legend of a Suicide... well, perhaps it was never very likely to. That doesn’t, however, stop it from being a powerful piece of work in its own right.

Caribou Island is a portrait of two relationships under strain. Gary and Irene are about to move from the Alaskan mainland to Caribou Island, to fulfil Gary’s dream of building a cabin the old-fashioned way; Irene, by the way, wants nothing of this, but hasn’t had much say in the matter. Meanwhile, the couple’s daughter Rhoda is hoping to get married to her boyfriend, Jim – though Jim has rather taken a shine to Monique, a visiting friend of Rhoda’s brother. And Monique has apparently taken a shine to Jim, despite being in a relationship of her own.

Vann’s hallmarks from Legend of a Suicide are present here: a strong sense of place, coupled with a strong sense of physicality, the work it takes to live in such landscapes; and a skilful control of mood. Right there in the first paragraph is an example of how Vann can pull the reader up short, as Irene casualy tells Rhoda how, at the age of ten, she came home one day to find her mother’s hanging body – no lead-up, no drama, just matter-of-fact; it sets a tone for the novel of tragedy never being far from the surface.

The landscape of Alaska is also used to great effect in Caribou Island, as it reflects the differing concerns of the characters. For example, Gary, who was once studying for a doctorate in Scandinavian literature, seeks from Alaska a land, or a life, redolent of those earlier times he studied. In contrast, for Monique’s boyfriend Carl, Alaska is simply a place from which to escape, as it has done nothing but destroy his relationship. And when Jim goes on a helicopter tour of the area with Monique, he sees the familiar land anew, which echoes his restlessness.

The external world reflects the internal in other ways, too, the most prominent being Gary’s cabin, which he sees as being ‘the extension of a man, a form of his own mind’ – hence, it symbolises his relationship with Irene, and Gary is equally ill-equipped for both. Perhaps the symbolism is made a little too obvious, and having Irene think explicitly about how building the cabin could be a metaphor for her life is perhaps overdoing it; but the entire novel remains a highly elegant construction.

There are some nicely effective contrasts in Caribou Island, such as the irony of Irene’s embracing of the wilderness towards the end, just as Gary is realising some of the drawbacks of his desire for it; and the differing trajectories of Irene’s and Rhoda’s respective relationships. What also strikes me, though, is that many of the fundamental reasons for characters’ dissatisfactions remain hidden; for all that’s revealed, I think a lot is also left unsaid. The most content character in the book seems to be Rhoda’s brother Mark; he is also one of the most distant from the reader, suggesting how elusive true happiness is within the pages of Caribou Island. It’s a bleak book, yes, but also a beautiful one.(less)

1 like · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 84 85 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (23)

More editions...

Genres

Contemporary

8 users

Romance

6 users

Family

5 users

Literature

5 users

Novels

4 users

Literature > American

4 users

Book Club

4 users

Literary Fiction

4 users

Environment > Nature

3 users

Relationships

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About David Vann

David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. For 12 years, no agent would send out his first book, Legend of a Suicide, so he went to sea and became a captain and boat builder. Legend of a Suicide has now won 10 prizes, including the Prix Medicis Etranger in France for best foreign novel, the Premi Llibreter in Spain for best foreign novel, the Grace Pa...more David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. For 12 years, no agent would send out his first book, Legend of a Suicide, so he went to sea and became a captain and boat builder. Legend of a Suicide has now won 10 prizes, including the Prix Medicis Etranger in France for best foreign novel, the Premi Llibreter in Spain for best foreign novel, the Grace Paley Prize, a California Book Award, and the L’Express readers’ prize (France). Being translated into 18 languages, Legend of a Suicide is an international bestseller and has also been on 40 Best Books of the Year lists in 11 countries, been selected by the New Yorker Book Club and the Times Book Club, read in full on North German radio, and will be made into a film by Haut et Court (producers of The Class and Coco Avant Chanel). David has also been listed for the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the Story Prize, and others. His novel Caribou Island is an international bestseller being translated into 18 languages, on 25 Best Books of the Year lists in 9 countries, shortlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and will be made into a film by Bill Guttentag. It was read on the BBC for two weeks, selected by the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark, and shortlisted for the Prix du Roman Fnac and Prix Lire & Virgin in France and also won several local prizes in France. His new novel, Dirt (2012), is being published in 12 languages, has been on Best Books of the Year lists in 4 countries, is a bestseller in France, and has had cover features in French and Spanish magazines. His next novel, Goat Mountain, will be published in September 2013, and his story collection, The Higher Blue, in 2015 or later in languages other than English. He is the author of the bestselling memoir A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea and Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter, winner of the AWP Nonfiction Prize. He has been in documentaries with the BBC, NOVA, National Geographic, CNN, E! Entertainment, and written for the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Financial Times, Elle UK, Esquire UK, Esquire Russia, National Geographic Adventure, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney's, and other magazines and newspapers. A forner Guggenheim fellow, Wallace Stegner fellow, John L'Heureux fellow, and NEA fellow, he has taught at Stanford, Cornell, FSU, USF, and is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick in England.
(less)

More about David Vann...

Books by David Vann

A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Caribou Island

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

title link	preview: Caribou Island
avg rating	preview: Caribou Island Goodreads rating: 3.32 (1178 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8584946-caribou-island?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1279214042l/8584946.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8584946-caribou-island?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Caribou Island by David Vann[/url]

Caribou Island

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website