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Revision as of 11:15, 31 August 2020
, 11:15, 31 August 2020no edit summary
Neither Jim nor Roy have the skills to survive in the extreme conditions and Roy certainly lacks the will, but by the end of the first part of the novella Roy has extracted a brutal revenge on his father – and David Vann has delivered an unsubtle, but shocking message to his own parent.
In the second part of the novella , the narration is taken over by the fictional Jim, but I found it difficult not to read this as a continuation of the words that David Vann needed to speak to his own father. It's part horror and a compelling mixture of anger, grief and loss. It comes from deep within the soul and I doubt that it could have been written by someone without the author's background. The writing is tightly controlled, with occasional bursts of violence almost a metaphor for anger, but I did wonder how Vann would fare with a subject which wasn't at least partly autobiographical.
''Legend of a Suicide'' is not an easy read. There's a sense of delving too deeply into the mind of another human being and being slightly uncomfortable with what you find. There are images which will stay with me for a long time, but I doubt that the story will ever completely go away.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
Few books can measure up to ''Legend of a Suicide'' but you might appreciate [[Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell]] or [[Depths by Henning Mankell|Depths]] by the same author. [[Goat Mountain by David Vann]] is not for those of a delicate disposition.
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