Aquarium (Vann)

Aquarium 
David Vann, 2015
Grove/Atlantic
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802123527


Summary
David Vann’s dazzling debut Legend of a Suicide was reviewed in over a 150 major global publications, won 11 prizes worldwide, was on 40 "best books of the year" lists, and established its author as a literary master. Since then, Vann has delivered an exceptional body of work, receiving, among others, best foreign novel in France and Spain (France’s Prix Medicis Etranger, Spain’s Premi Llibreter), a California Book Award, and the mid-career St. Francis College Literary Prize. Aquarium, his implosive new book and first to be published by Grove, will take Vann to a wider audience than ever before.

Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother—a docker at the local container port—in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish.

Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamored of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother toward a precipice of terrifying consequence.

In crystalline, chiseled yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her. Relentless and heartbreaking, primal and redemptive, Aquarium is a transporting story from one of the best American writers of our time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1966
• Where—Adak Island, Alaska, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Cornell University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Coventry, England, UK


David Vann is an American born author and creative writing professor at the University of Warwick in England. Vann has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, a Wallace Stegner fellow, and a John L’Heureux fellow.

Born in the Aleutian Islands, Vann spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. For twelve 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, a largely autobiographical novel, was finally published in 2008 and has won ten 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).

His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers. His books have been selected for the New Yorker Book Club, the Times Book Club, and the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark. He has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, CNN, PBS, National Geographic, and E! Entertainment.

Awards
2007 - Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2008 - California Book Award - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2009 - AWP Nonfiction Award - Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter
2010 - Prix Medicis Etranger (France) - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2011 - Premi Llibreter (Spain) - Legend of a Suicide/Sukkwan Island
2013 - St. Francis College Literary Prize - Dirt

Works
2005 - A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea
2008 - Legend of a Suicide: Stories and a Novella
2011 - Caribou Island
2011 - Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter
2012 - Dirt
2013 - Goat Mountain
2014 - Crocodile: Memoirs from a Mexican Drug-Running Port (in Spanish)
2015 - Aquarium
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/23/2015.)

Book Reviews
Aquarium is a genuine departure for Vann, an authentically new direction…. Aquarium has a vastly different feel from Vann's other books, a tone and texture quite removed from the relentlessness of his Alaskan (and rural Californian) tales. It leaves more air and space for the reader, it dwells less on physical mechanics, and it has a softer touch, as befits its gentle child protagonist.
Lydia Millet - New York Times Book Review


Elegantly written and fiercely imagined...physically, this book is so gorgeous it enhanced my reading experience. I found myself turning pages slowly, then running my hand across each smooth page. The photographs throughout the text, along with the turquoise capital letters that begin each chapter and mark the author's name and book title on every creamy, thick page, reminded me that no electronic reader could provide this tactile and visual experience...suspenseful …at times, this is a painful novel, but its beauty propels it toward redemption.
Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune


Much like the waters of the Seattle tourist attraction at its heart, David Vann’s new novel, Aquarium, virtually bends light, plunging the reader into the relentless darkness of tormented souls in a splintered family.... His language hits the reader like shrapnel in a metalworker’s studio—fragmented and sharp-fitting for novels so packed with shattering turns.
Tyrone Beason - Seattle Times


Gripping, painful, but ultimately hopeful, Aquarium is a coming-of-age story that explores the limits of love and forgiveness. Vann submerges you so deeply in Caitlin’s world, you’ll be gasping for breath when you finally surface.
Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly


If deprivation was to Larkin what daffodils were to Wordsworth, then David Vann’s daffodils are fish...Told bravely but persuasively.... The author has metamorphosed himself into a 12-year-old girl with startlingly brilliant results. Aquarium is as rich as good poetry and as addictive as a first-class detective novel.
Wynn Wheldon - Spectator


A triumph.
Daily Mail (UK)


A stirring tale that isn’t as simple as it first appears.
Esquire (UK)


This novel is arguably Vann’s brightest.... Caitlin’s tale with its many surface ripples proves immersive, the narrative propelling us along like a forceful current....Once again, and in contrast to many of his peers, Vann’s trademark limpid prose enables us to observe far more of what lies beneath.
Weekend Australian


Vann’s elegantly written, emotionally intense novel juxtaposes the contained world of undersea creatures with the life of a family forced beyond its self-protective isolation.... The conflict between mother and daughter...feels improbably extreme at times, it’s more than made up for by Caitlin’s emotional depth and nimble imagination.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A 12-year-old's fragile world, mesmerizing innocence, and emerging adolescence are the heart of this alluring novel from Vann.... Caitlin juggles protective love for her mother with her irresistible need to seek out and embrace her roots.... [A] lovely, wrenching novel —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal


By pulling no punches in this explicit exploration of family, forgiveness, duty, acceptance, parent-child relationships, and what constitutes abuse, Vann has outdone himself.
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A] kind of modern fairy tale, one laced with treachery and trials and the greatest demon of all to battle, the past.... Like all good heroines who make their ways out of the woods, Caitlin is clever and brave.... Vann's novels are striking, uncompromising portraits of American life; here is another exceptional example.
Kirkus Reviews

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