David Vann - Caribou Island

David Vann's debut novel, Caribou Island, has a retired couple struggling to make sense of the disappointment of their lives, a young(ish) couple struggling with will-they-or-won't-they marriage issues and infidelity, a stoner struggling with being unable to catch enough salmon, and a self-described “trust-fund brat” struggling with making sure she sleeps with all of the primary male characters before vanishing from the story. In short, there's a lot of struggling occurring in the near wilderness of Alaska in Vann's novel, and it seems that the threat of violence hangs constant over the heads of everyone involved, seething and trembling beneath controlled sentences and glacial pacing.

Caribou Island circles around the problems of a few discrete couples linked together by family ties. The issues of Gary and Irene, the just-retired couple, rarely intersect with that of Rhoda (their daughter) and Jim, the dentist, who unsurprisingly finds sex with a twenty-two year old stranger more enjoyable than the thirty year old woman he lives with and has known for almost two years. Attached to this is Mark, Rhoda's brother, who appears when the story requires a salmon-fishing diversion to break up the tension, of which there is a great deal. Lastly there is Carl, pathetic, hopeless, poor, romantic, Carl, an intellectual without an outlet for it, a dreamer without a dream to share. He is with the twenty-two year old stranger, Monique, who is as unfamiliar to him as she is to Jim, and who serves primarily as a propellant for the plot to keep on turning.

These characters are not happy, and I daresay none of them smile, even in private. Sometimes there is laughter, but it is bitter, cynical laughter, not at all friendly and not at all real. It seems that everyone is on the cusp of discovering that their life has been up to this point a complete and absolute failure, and it is Vann's duty to chronicle this discovery and its fallout. But not consequence – with one rare and violent exception, the novel ends where it began, which is to say in stasis, paralysed, its characters stultified by the fear of trying something new and different.

Lest this review sound completely negative, Caribou Island is in fact a rather enjoyable read. Vann's writing is precise and clear, and without dabbling in ill-advised cold, Alaska-themed metaphors, I should note that the cumulative effect of Caribou Island's clipped sentences, its speech free from dialogue marks, and its steady, unrelenting gaze upon the bleakness of the scenery of Alaska and the bleakness of the souls and minds of its characters, is extraordinary in its ability to capture a feeling of place and a sensation of misery. While nobody is very happy, Vann refuses to wallow in his characters' misery, instead using their depression coupled with the pristine coldness of the surrounds as a kind of mirroring effect, which serves to increase the harshness of both without succumbing to exaggeration or needless immensity.

Gary looked out the window at the lake through the trees, ate the salmon, knew he should feel lucky, but felt nothing except a mild, background terror of how he'd get through the day, how he'd fill the hours. He'd felt this all his adult life, especially in the evenings, especially when he was single. After the sun went down, the stretch of time until when he could sleep seemed an impossible expanse, something looming, a void that couldn't be crossed. He'd never told anyone about it, not even Irene. It would sound like he was defective in some way. He doubted anyone would really understand.

The above quoted goes to the heart of Caribou Island. Gary doubts anyone would really understand, and thus he never tries to explain himself, to describe the feelings he has carried inside all his life. Similarly, the other characters in the novel have their own nurtured truth and their own unwillingness to share because, without any evidence whatsoever, they all assume their respective partners will fail to understand. And perhaps they are right, but one cannot live without at least trying; the fear of failure really isn't good enough. Caribou Island explores this fear and how each character comes to learn that, yes, it isn't enough to live life in fear, and that if you do you end it in fear as well, and nothing has changed and nothing will be better. Toward the end of the novel Irene, Gary's wife, tells her daughter, “If you don't wake up, you'll be alone like this too. Your life spent, and nothing left. And no one will understand you. And you'll feel so angry..” - but by this point we are unsurprised when Rhoda fails to take heed, and the spirals of bitterness continue.

Rhoda's almost-fiancee Jim provides early entertainment. He's a dentist, significantly wealthy in comparison with the other residents of this small Alaskan community, and satisfied with his life. Monique, Carl's girlfriend, is an attraction and an enigma, a woman who is happy for him to spend the day paying for outrageous meals and ridiculous activities only to insult his manhood and efforts to seduce her – and then to have a lengthy shower and emerge clean, fresh and willing to do whatever he wishes. Vann captures the middle-aged man's attraction to Monique well, and perhaps most importantly he captures Monique well – she remains entirely unknowable and appealing throughout. She is a nut that ends the novel uncracked, and all the better for it. Jim, on the other hand, is hilarious in his ineptitude and complete lack of self-awareness:

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 the 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 couldn't help with that.

Oh, Jim. From here, Jim takes to exercising, starts using the “hip” language he has heard people in their twenties use, and generally becomes even more of a joke. Monique recognises him for it and takes him for as much as she can.

The novel's centre, I believe unintended, is Carl. Carl is, as noted above, pathetic and overly romantic and one of those people one describes as “not long for this world.” He's too impractical and too idealistic, but he has heart, and though he wears it on his sleeve where it can become too easily bruised and battered, it's there and it's true. Every scene involving Carl is a revelation of feeling because it is so distinct from the misery of everything else – and even when Carl italics is miserable, he does it with feeling and he does it with an understanding that life can, in fact, be better, and that dreams have value as much in being dreamed as achieved. When he leaves the novel it darkens and never recovers from it.

Caribou Island is a strong debut, but it remains very much a first novel. Vann has bitten off more than he can chew, or perhaps more accurately, he has stretched a short story into a novel and failed to adjust the ambition and scope of the initial piece. Certain parts work well – Jim's pathetic attempts at infidelity, and Carl come immediately to mind – but too much of it comes across as wheel-spinning, and the climax of the novel in particular feels unearned and, though shocking, really changes nothing. David Vann is a technically strong writer, but Caribou Island's plot, its characters, and its thematic ambition remain weak.

Author	David Vann
Title	Caribou Island
Nationality	American
Publisher	Penguin
Published	2011
Pages	293
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

Reviews

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