Legend Of A Suicide
  • Published: 28 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141043784
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $39.99

Legend Of A Suicide

Formats & editions
EBook
29 Oct 2009
Paperback
28 Sep 2009
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

A stunning fiction debut compared by the New York Times to Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff

Roy is still young when his father, a failed dentist and hapless fisherman, puts a .44 magnum to his head and commits suicide on the deck of his beloved boat. Throughout his life, Roy returns to that moment, gripped by its memory and the shadow it casts over his small-town boyhood, describing with poignant, mercurial wit his parents' woeful marriage and inevitable divorce, their kindnesses and weaknesses, the absurd and comic turning-points of his past. Finally, in Legend of a Suicide, Roy lays his father's ghost to rest. But not before he exacts a gruelling, exhilarating revenge.


Revolving around a fatally misconceived adventure deep in the wilderness of Alaska, this is a remarkably tender story of survival and disillusioned love.
  • Published: 28 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141043784
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

About the author

David Vann


David Vann was born in Alaska and comes from a family of sinkers. His father sank a new cabin cruiser in Alaska, right in the marina, by forgetting to put in the drain plug when he launched. Vann's grandfather sank an old converted Navy cruiser on a lake in California. His uncle sank the same boat twice in Idaho. Vann himself sank in the Caribbean on his honeymoon, as chronicled in his best-selling memoir, A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea. Every family has to be good at something, and Vann is hard at work continuing the tradition. Last year, he built a 52-foot aluminum trimaran for a nonstop solo circumnavigation for Esquire magazine and had to turn back because the boat was about to fold in half. He's also had run-ins with pirates in Mexico, which he wrote about for Outside magazine, and he's sailed by land from Florida to California for Men's Journal on a 'Blokart,' a tricycle with a sail (made in New Zealand, where Vann has residency). He also loves to sail the Mediterranean, and once lost a rudder off Morocco.

In Legend of a Suicide, though, Vann turns to fiction to write about the defining disaster of his life, the suicide of his father when Vann was 13. The book is the winner of the Grace Paley Prize and was named a Notable Book of 2008 by the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star, and the Story Prize.

Vann has worked on documentaries in 2009 with the BBC, NOVA, and CNN, and he's been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow, taught at Stanford and Cornell, where he received his degrees, and is currently a professor at the University of San Francisco.

Also by David Vann

Caribou Island
See all

Praise for Legend Of A Suicide

From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both

New York Times

Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget

San Francisco Chronicle

An extraordinary, ground-breaking piece of fiction ... Nothing quite like this book has been written before

Alex Linklater, Observer

A richly gifted newcomer

Sunday Times Books for 2009

Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and genuine surprises

Publishers’ Weekly

Oh my god, Legend of a Suicide just bowled me over completely. It is such a tender, heartbreaking, breathtaking, horrifying and insanely compelling read that when I finished it I went straight back to the beginning and round again. I implore anyone with functioning eyes to read this book

Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine

So hard to put down that I am thinking of suing David Vann for several hours of lost sleep

Lionel Shriver

This book squeezes more life out of the first hundred pages than most books could manage in a thousand, which is pretty impressive, considering it's a book about death

Ross Raisin, author of God's Own Country

In his portrayal of a young son's love for his lost father David Vann has created a stunning work of fiction: surprising, beautiful and intensely moving

Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

One of the most gripping debuts I've ever read

Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan

Impossible to put down and equally impossible to forget

San Francisco Chronicle

An American classic ... harrowing but beautifully wrought ... prose as clear and bracing as a mountain stream

Sunday Times

One jaw-droppingly powerful, courageous and original fiction debut...As a 10th work of fiction this would be impressive; as a debut, it is remarkable

Sunday Telegraph

Hands down the best fictional debut we have read this year

Dazed & Confused

For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure, but the story it tells - the story of the suicide of the author's father - has an immediacy and sharpness made all the more special by the tone of distance in the narrative and the beauty of the writing

Colm Toibin, Observer books of the year

David Vann's Legend of a Suicide is brave, fantastically well written, and completely defies categorisation

Julie Myerson, Daily Telegraph books of the year

From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both

New York Times
penguin pop image
penguin pop image